


Destined

by blahblahwahwah



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love/Hate, Parallel Universes, Post 4x06, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-01 19:34:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 35,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5218115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blahblahwahwah/pseuds/blahblahwahwah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Inspired by  4x06: We found ourselves in each other (what an episode!).</p><p>Oliver falls through a breach in the multiverse into a world where Felicity despises his counterpart. Felicity from his world moves hell and high water to get him back.</p><p>On hiatus till season 5 is done.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Earth X

**Author's Note:**

> There used to be this fun show called Sliders way back in the Buffy generation - that was like before Fringe and it was way cooler.
> 
> There's also brilliant fic called Somewhere Out There by cinnamonjay in this site. A brilliant read and I check every six hours for updates (hints at the author or any friends of the author who can egg her for another chapter) though it hasn't been updated in a while. 
> 
> So we were watching 4x06 - me and a friend - a lot of wine was involved (because we are that old and wine-dependent for dealing with RL) and we were talking about Sliders and cinnmonjay's fic.  
> Then we were all up and about how in an alternate/parallel universe Felicity and Oliver would be complete opposites of their canon personalities, but somethings don't change like the fact that they are just meant to be together, Diggle and Felicity would always be friends and Amanda Waller would always be ARGUS.

_"There’s knocking at the gate. Come, come, come, come. Give me your hand. What’s done cannot be undone."_

_\- Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 1). William Shakespeare._

 

Felicity Palmer was having already having a bad day when the call came in.

Her assistant just _decided_ to screw up her schedule that day. She ended up at the seventh floor conference room of Kord LLC, instead of the top floor conference room of Merlyn Global and left the small Kord Building internally embarrassed but coolly ignoring the pitiful looks Ted Kord was giving her.

She was convinced it was no accident. It was payback for the massive blowout she'd heaped on what'shisface, reducing him to tears in front of the entire lobby at Palmer Technologies. Suffice to say Three (she has at least four EAs. She never bothered with their names - just gave them numbers) was fired.

Her brand new pumps were giving her hell and she was literally limping her way down the lobby to the elevator when the phone rang.

"Mrs. Palmer?"

"Ms. Waller." Felicity said, twitching her ankle to adjust to the pain. "I thought our meeting wasn't till next week."

"This is another matter, Mrs. Palmer." Waller said, "You'll have to drop your appointments for the day and come down, now. Our chopper's waiting for you as we speak."

The elevator door opened and Felicity saw two men dressed in black suits coming out. They looked directly at her and nodded.

"That'll will cost me money, Amanda."  Felicity said. "This better be good."

"Trust me, Felicity." Waller's voice sounded nervous (and that was a rarity in Felicity's experience). "You want to come down for this."

 

 

"Is this really necessary?" Felicity shouted over the voice of the chopper, when the ARGUS agents pulled off the blindfold.

"You know the rules, ma'am." An agent she'd worked with before and recognized as Agent Feinman spoke.

She shrugged and bent to massage her ankles before she got out of the chopper.

"You do know." Felicity pointed out to Lyla Michaels-Diggle who received her at the helipad. "That none of ARGUS's blacksites are really elusive to me."

"I know." Lyla said, smiling. "Between you and me, I'm happy you're on our side."

"How's John?" Felicity asked, once she was in the elevator.

Lyla's face sank. "He has good days - and bad days."

"I'll try and come by, sometime." Felicity said, fishing out her three phones and handing it over the Agent Feinman who had his palm stretched out.

"I think he would like that." Lyla said. "I just hope you see him on a good day."

Felicity looked at a nasty bruise on Lyla's cheek with sadness, she leaned over and whispered to Lyla, pointing to it. "Was that him?"

Lyla stayed silent. Felicity had her answer.

 

 

"Mrs. Palmer." Amanda Waller greeted her in her usual crisp, collected demeanour in the command centre.

"Ms. Waller." Felicity nodded, keeping her briefcase on the table.

"How are you?" Waller said, exchanging glances with Lyla.

"That's the first time, I've ever heard you ask me that." Felicity said, cocking her head at her. She watched Waller sink into a chair but didn't follow when the other woman motioned to her to do the same.

"Something's very wrong, I presume." Felicity said, calmly.

"I need to ask you a few questions." Waller said. "About your husband."

"Ray?" Felicity said, feeling nervous.

Waller hesitated. "No, your first husband."

Felicity's heart went cold. "Ah." She said. She pulled out the chair and sat, keeping her expressions as calm and unsuspicious as possible.

"Where is Mr. Palmer, anyway?" Waller said, once Felicity was seated and a cup of coffee was placed before her.

The thought of Ray brought irritation with it. "He's in Capital City this week." Felicity said.

Waller nodded and pursed her lips.

"You wanted some information about Oliver." Felicity said, unemotionally.

"About his death." Waller said, matter-of-factly.

"Why?"

"Something's come up."

"Why, what else did he do?"

"Why do you assume it was something he did?"

"Ms. Waller, I spent two years cleaning up the messes he made." Felicity said. "And even now I'm convinced I only uncovered a tip of an iceberg."

Waller nodded in agreement. "We did - and we still do - appreciate your cooperation."

"Better or worse, right." Felicity shrugged.

"The night the Queen's Gambit capsized." Waller said, "You said he fell off the rail before anyone could rescue him."

Felicity closed her eyes, shutting off memories of that night.  "Yes." She said.

"And you are sure, you saw the mast hit his head."

She tried to swallow subtly to gulp the huge lump she felt in her throat. "Yes." She said. "Mr. Diggle, I'm sure told you the same."

Waller nodded. "They never recovered his body." She said, looking at her face carefully.

"I never imagined they would." Felicity said, trying to feign sadness. She looked at Lyla, who looked at her encouragingly. "The mast hit the back of his head. It was too stormy. John said that he might have been unconscious when he drowned. I take satisfaction in the fact that he wouldn't have suffered."

"But you can't be sure he didn't wash up on an island or somewhere like that?"

"What's this about, Amanda?" Felicity said, looking to Lyla as well. "We searched for him for almost a year, you know that. I lost almost all my personal savings in the search and rescue. You'd frozen virtually all my accounts during the investigation, remember?"

"Yes, I do." Waller said. "It's just that something's come up."

"And that is why I'm here." Felicity said, coolly. "So why don't we cut the crap and you tell me. Because I've had very important meetings which I've cancelled, for you."

Waller nodded at Lyla and rose. "We need to show you - something." Waller said.

Felicity frowned. "What?"

"Come with us please."

 

 

She heard him, before she saw him.

She thought. _No.No.No. It can't be him. There's no way._

"This may come as a shock." Waller said to her before they entered the room.

She was taken to a dark room that was only illumined by computer lights and was bustling with activity. Felicity had enough experience with A.R.G.U.S. to know that this was a surveillance room that led to A.R.G.U.S. most heavily guarded isolated prison cells. There was a plasma screen with details about Oliver, few pictures. with what she recognized to be a timeline of his life and death.

The room suddenly went silent as when she stepped in. Agents looked at her and each other nervously. Two younger agents began to clear some space next to the CCT monitors.

Her eyes fell on a picture of Oliver as soon as she entered. Even through a photograph his intense gaze unsettled her, taunted her. (But then she was just imagining it. After all, that picture was from a photo-op for a fundraiser. Taken a week before they went to sea.)

There was another picture, from their wedding day. Felicity barely recognized herself. She was so young. As was Oliver. She had a pleasant, close-lipped smile she usually wore but for what it was worth, she looked like she was happy - though now, she couldn't recall what the feeling was like. Oliver was hugging her to his side, looking at camera again, so intensely, smiling. He had given her that same intense look the last time she saw him.

The same conniving smile.

Felicity closed her eyes, shoving the pain she felt within her chest away.

That was when she heard someone scream from the other side of the wall. And in that instant she recognized his voice.

"What the hell Amanda!" The man on the other side was shouting. "Stop playing games! Why are you doing this?"

Felicity's jaw fell. Waller saw her expression and pointed to a screen. There was surveillance video in it.

Through the greyscale video, Felicity zeroed in on someone rattling the cages of A.R.G.U.S's highly secured, impenetrable iron-barred holding cell. She recognized the cell.  Palmer-Queen Securities held the patent for that cell and Felicity had negotiated the contract.

Felicity inadvertently dropped into a chair, when the man looked up into the camera.

 _It can't be._ Her brain screamed at her. Her heart stilled for an instant before it started thundering in her chest. Oliver - her Oliver looked at the camera.

He was alive.

_It can't be. It mustn't be._

"We found him," Waller started to speak slowly. "in a small alleyway in the Glades. He was chasing after someone. He - he was wearing a mask."

"What?" Felicity said, confused. She peered at the footage. Even though the feed was grayscale the intensity in his eyes - those eyes.... _the ones she fell in love with_ , _that face that broke her heart, over and over again._

"It's not possible." Felicity said, shaking her head.

"Mrs. Palmer, are you sure there's no possibility he could have survived the storm?"

 _The gunshot echoed in her ears._ Felicity shook her head.

Waller nodded. "It is odd. There's also this - he recognized me."

"How is that possible?" Felicity said. "You said you never met my husband - while he was alive." Felicity said, looking up at her.

"Precisely," Waller said.

"How did you find him?"

"We were monitoring a meta human who - how does one put it? Teleports from place to place as he runs."

"Spacebenders." Felicity said, nodding. "Mr. Ramone calls them that."

"The man works for H.I.V.E.. We'd lost track of him for months. Until two days ago. He appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the interstate. This man - " She pointed to the camera. "Was chasing him down." Waller breaks off and sighs. "He actually caught him for us."

Lyla brought her a green hooded jacket with kevlar sown in, a large green bow and a quiver full of high specialized - and weaponized arrows to her. "He had this, with him." Lyla said.

Felicity frowned. She took the bow and examined it. She shook her head. "There must be some mistake - Oliver doesn't know archery."

"Are you sure?" Waller said. "I don't mean to be offensive here, Mrs. Palmer, but there were a lot of things about him you didn't know."

Felicity couldn't really argue with that. Her head started to pound. She dropped it in her hands and started to think.

Was it possible that he escaped? Was it possible he survived somewhere? Maybe someone rescued him. Maybe he was hiding all this time - waiting. Or maybe he was resurrected from the dead, or maybe transformed by the Star Labs expolosion - stranger things have happened in recent times.

"The DNA's a match." Waller said, softly.

It wasn't possible. It couldn't be possible.

"Let me see him." Felicity said, rubbing her eyes.

"I don't know if that's a good idea." Lyla started to say.

Felicity raised her head from her hands, glared at Amanda Waller and hissed. "Let. Me. See  him."

 

 

The eyes that met hers belonged to Oliver's - but something...something was terribly off.

He was screaming at Amanda while she entered and his rant arrested mid-sentence. He sighed loudly when he saw her. Felicity's heart skipped a beat when his face suddenly softened and his eyes looked relieved when they fixed on her.

"Felicity." He gasped her name.

_The way he said her name._

The way he would when he made love to her.

Felicity felt grief and vengeance consume her at once. She kept her face straight when she examined his appearance. This man - he was all buffed up. There were so many scars and tattoos all over his body - it was disturbing.

He looked like he'd suffered physical harm a great deal.

Maybe - it was possible. He might have survived. But then - would he be looking at her like that? With hope and relief? (Not vengeance, or hatred or at least apprehension?)

Surely, not.

Felicity walked forward towards the cell. He gripped the bar and strained towards her. His blue eyes, searching her face desperately - until he frowned suddenly, looking at her up and down. He looked towards Lyla as well.

"What's going on? " He said. "Was I hurt or something? How long have I been out?"

Felicity was certain her heart would jump out of her chest the way it raced within. She stepped forward, as close to the iron bars as possible.

He looked at her face with concern that actually reached his eyes (so unlike the Oliver she knew). He tentatively reached his hand out through the bars and yelped when the electric shield activated and zapped him. "Fuck!" He cursed and jumped back, flapping his hand, to mitigate the effect of the current.

Felicity reached her hand up to the access dial and punched in a code. The shield deactivated.

"Felicity!" Lyla hissed. The three agents guarding her, snapped their guns up.

"Give me your gun." Felicity said, calmly.

"I don't think -"

"Your gun, Agent Michaels." She repeated, commandingly.

Lyla looked up towards the two-way mirror of the surveillance box. A knock sounded after a few seconds. She shrugged, handed Felicity the pistol and stepped back.

The man who looked like Oliver looked poised to pounce when Felicity punched in the second access code and the iron bars opened. She drew the pistol, aiming it at him, looking at his eyes meaningfully.

His stance, relaxed. He nodded, lifted his palms up defensively and retreated into a corner.

She was not unaware that he could easily disarm her, despite her training. She knew that he may take her hostage or hurt her. If he was really Oliver, he would certainly try. But - something within her compelled her to see for herself. As close as she could possibly get.

When she stepped into the cell and locked it behind her, despite Lyla's protests. She dropped the gun to her side, and looked at him, apprehensively.

He didn't seem threatened by her - at all. His lips widened a little with corners turning up, eyes twinkling at her. He was looking at her like - like he was amused and happy to see her all at once. He was just looking at her with...fondness.

"Look at you, being all badass." He quipped in hushed tones.

Felicity didn't react.

His smile faltered. "Okay." He said gently. "I'm gonna take a step towards you now." There was also amusement in his tone. Like - like he thought this was all some joke.

She nodded and matched him taking a step forward as well. His face was just getting more relaxed as they kept advancing towards each other.

"Hey." He said, softly.

It was a greeting.

"Hey." She said, unwittingly.

He lifted his hand towards her face; he pursed his lips, looking at her meaningfully - like he was asking her permission to touch her. Felicity was perplexed and bewildered. She stood frozen unable to move.

He took her lack of response as permission because he reached his hand to cup her face.

So much warmth filled her - she was so overwhelmed that without realizing, she shut her eyes - leaned in to his touch.

"How - long have I been gone?" He said, softly. "You look like - I died or something."

She opened her eyes, mesmerized by his gaze. She cleared her throat, keeping her grip firm on the gun. "What - ?" She said, thickly. "What happened to you? What is the last thing you remember - before - this?"

He sighed and dropped his hand to her shoulder, squeezing it.

"I was chasing after McNare." He said.

"McNare?"

"The jumper? The meta? I guess something happened when I tackled him I suddenly ended up in the middle of the highway. Someone knocked me in the head. Next thing I know, Waller and her team are on me like I was the one who robbed the bank and -" He shrugged. "Been here two days now."

"You know Waller?" She said, uncertainly.

"Yeah - about that." He started to knead her shoulder and Felicity had absolutely no idea why but she allowed it - she even _liked_ it. "Why does she pretend like we've never met? Felicity - was there some sort of time jump thing that happened? Barry said that it's possible McNare can..."

Her eyes widened. He knew Barry? He couldn't possibly know Barry!

"What's..." Felicity literally choked on her words, interrupting him. "What's the last thing - you remember about us?"

The man lifted his other arm and cupped her other cheek, cradling her face in his hands.

"We were arguing." He said, but didn't look too unhappy about it.

Felicity's breathing slowed.

"About breakfast." His smile widened. The trademark Oliver Queen smile that women fell for - that she fell for - appeared. A smile she only remembered to be a proficient liar's manipulative smile that she was so easily fooled by. A smile that cost her more than just her heart and her dignity but almost cost Felicity, her life as well

He stepped closer. "You wanted to try and cook." He mockingly rolled his eyes. "Again."

She was captivated by him - but it was not like when Oliver would spin his magic on her in the past. There was something so, _so,_ different about this.

"And I won..." He was saying, winking at her.

"You won?" She echoed.

He wiggled his eyebrows at her as though something sensual had transpired but he didn't want to reveal it, knowing everyone was listening.

"And I made you, your favorite chocolate chip pancakes." He said, his grin softening into an endearing smirk.

That didn't make any sense.

"What went wrong if I cooked?" She said, frowning (even though the question sounded irrelevant once she said it.)

"C'mon, Felicity!" He burst into a small chuckle. "You're a terrible cook."

She was a great cook. In fact, she always cooked for the both of them, when they were together. What was he talking about?

Also. She hated chocolate.

"What happened to your hair?" He said, threading his hands through her locks. "Did you stop dyeing it?"

Felicity picked her wavy brown hair and examined it. She had never dyed her hair. There was nothing different about the way she wore in the last fifteen years - yet he looked at her face as though she had grown an extra head.

"I think I like it." He placed his hand on her crown, stroking her hair. "Do _you_ like it?"

There was familiarity to the vibe of calm that flooded through her. Oliver was always good at inducing a pleasant feeling in her - one of the reasons she was so drawn to him, no matter how fake and ulterior his motives were.

But there was still a difference. This man - his eyes - they were so affectionate, so - _kind_.

The Oliver she knew never looked at her that way.

Felicity stepped away. Away from his grasp - away from the intense, loving eyes she saw on the face of a man that she knew was not capable of anything genuine.

"Mrs. Palmer." Waller's voice interrupted.

Felicity turned to find Waller standing outside the cell besides Lyla.  

And she looked livid.

Felicity surmised it had more to do with the fact that she used skeleton codes to deactivate the cell's security. Felicity had an old habit of keeping contingencies.

"It's  illegal to keep skeleton codes for A.R.G.U.S. property." Waller said, crisply.

"Mrs. Palmer?" He exclaimed, drawing their attention. "What the -" He stepped back looking at her in shock. His face went pale. He looked towards Waller. "What day is it? What year?"

Waller hesitated for a second like she was weighing the consequence of answering. Then she told him.

"But - but that's now. It's two days, since I - since I've been here. There's no..." He paced the cell, confused. He looked towards Felicity - looking towards her for support, like she - she was a friend to him.

She was never Oliver's friend, ever. He never sought her for anything more than her brains or for sex or when he needed someone's emotions to manipulate.

She was always a toy to him. Nothing more.

"Felicity." He said, coming towards her, again. "You're freaking me out. It's not like you to be this quiet. Talk to me, please."

Her husband - the Oliver she knew, never stopped accusing her of being too cold and taciturn for his taste. Felicity was never a woman of many words. So - what the hell was this person talking about?

Felicity was about to say something when without warning he stepped into her personal space, grabbed her by shoulders, pulled her up to his height and kissed her.

Softly.

Not in that maddening, selfish, consuming way Oliver kissed her.

When he drew back, his face was blank. His eyes were cold - not cold and unfeeling, like the Oliver she remembered, but cold with some sort of realization.

"You're not my Felicity." The man whispered, so softly that only she could hear it.

 _You're not my Oliver._ She thought.

Suddenly he stiffened - his eyes diverted once downwards.

And that was when Felicity realized that her arm was up and she had the barrel of the pistol pressed into his abdomen.

The tension was thick enough to cut through with a knife.

He eyed her suspiciously. He didn't look scared, but he was cautious when he released his grip on her.

"Mrs. Palmer?" Waller said.

Felicity broke their gaze, and looked about to see that the cell was surrounded with more agents, with their guns trained on him.

"This man," Felicity said, loudly, before she turned around and exited the cell, "is not Oliver Queen."

 

 

"Oliver Queen is dead." Felicity would later say, to Lyla when they were alone. "This man isn't the Oliver, we knew."

"How can you be so sure he's dead?" Lyla asked, squeezing her shoulders.

She closed her eyes and remembered the last time she saw her husband. He was sneering at her, daring at her to do it. The shocked look on his face when she actually went through with it.

_A shot so loud, her eardrums almost blew._

"Because Lyla..." Felicity sobbed.

_The weight of the gun in her hand, the heat of the recoil, the tremble in her arm that stayed long after Diggle rescued her._

Felicity felt tears well up - but she blinked them away. "Because...I killed him."


	2. Earth X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: dark unpleasant stuff ahead

"Where's Ray?" Thea asked.

"Probably at his hotel room in Capital City - screwing his secretary." Felicity said, in bored voice.

"You look disturbed." Thea remarked, chewing on her food.

Felicity looked up from her phone and smiled at her wanly.

"Do I?" Felicity said. She smiled at her wanly. "I'm just distracted."

"No - you're disturbed." Thea said. "Does this one bother you?"

"Which one?"

"The girl Ray's bonking."

"No." Felicity shrugged. "This arrangement works for both of us."

Thea rolled her eyes.  "For him, you mean." Thea said, dropping her fork and scratching her arm.

Felicity sighed and reached for Thea's purse to help her get the medication that kept her symptoms under control.

"You should get a lover on the side too." Thea said, accepting the pill Felicity gave her.

"I don't have time for one." Felicity said.

"But you're disturbed." Thea said, looking at her pointedly. "I'm good at reading faces you know."

Felicity gave her a wan smile. "Yes, I know. But you know I can't talk about some things with you."

Thea nodded, she changed the topic. "I met someone." she said.

"Oh." Felicity said, feigning interest. "That's nice."

"There's this guy in my support group." Thea answered. "He's a victim like me. His brother used to blindfold him and..."

"You are not a victim." Felicity said, interrupting. "What did I teach you?"

"I am my own person. No one controls me." Thea chanted, bored. "Yeah - yeah - so anyway."

"Thea."

"It's BS." Thea said, earning a look from her. "You with all the bossy-face. I don't know why you make me go." Thea sighed. "So anyway - we had a session where we have to say something that we're grateful for what came out from the horrible experiences we've had."

Felicity frowned, disapprovingly. She never understood support group philosophies.

"So he gets up and he's like -" Thea continued. "He's grateful that he became a stronger person, yadda yadda. He helps kids deal with bullies."

"And what did you say?"

Thea grew increasingly distressed as she spoke. "I'm a friggin' mess, Felicity. Look at me!" She displayed her forearms with long cuts across them. "What was I supposed to say? I'm grateful my brother beat the crap out of me? That he experimented on me? Like I was some...I dunno - "

"Thea." Felicity stopped her. "Sweetheart. He's dead." _I hope._ She added, in her mind.

Thea said, sighing. "The only good thing that I got from my asshole half-brother was that he married you."

Felicity's looked at Thea with a feeling of distress mixed with affection.

"Anyway." Thea suddenly blushed. "He noticed me. He said I was a sweet person."

"Well, he's a great judge of character." Felicity reached out to squeeze Thea's hand.

"He is, though, right?" Thea's eyes suddenly went glassy. "Dead?"

Felicity's heart sank.

"Sometimes, when I'm walking on the road, I feel like he's following me." Thea's voice became all hollow. "I see him at night sometimes, at the window. I mean - I - I know they're just nightmares but - I feel like he's...there."

Thea's eyes suddenly zoned out. She fixed her gaze at a point behind Felicity. Felicity sighed, and went around towards her, taking the smaller girl into her arms.

"He's dead." Thea whispered.

"Yes." Felicity said.

Thea began to hyperventilate. "Tell me he's dead." She said, over and over again.

Felicity thought of the man inside the cage in A.R.G.U.S.'s blacksite and repeated. "He's dead, Thea. He won't hurt you anymore."

 

*

 

Diggle was having a good day when she called on him.

He was lucid, coherent, sitting on a swing and staring at his daughter play in the backyard. She greeted him with a kiss and no words, just sat beside him and held his hand while they watched little Carly play.

"I think I hit Lyla." He said, after a long silence.

"No, you didn't." Felicity said.

"Then why does she have a bruise the size of my fist?"

"Your hand struck her." Felicity said, repeating what Lyla told her. "You were lashing out at yourself. Punching the wall - Lyla tried to stop you." She fingered John's knuckles. "See these abrasions, here." He turned his head to look at her. "There's concrete chipped off in the garage. She showed me." She said. "You stopped the second she got struck. It was by accident."

Diggle carefully searched her eyes and nodded.

"I think it's ironic, that you'd believe me - and not her." She comments.

"I know you'd never lie to me." Diggle said. "Lyla protects me from myself. On every level."

"We're finding a way, John." Felicity said. "Don't give up."

"She thinks I'm being selfless, asking her to leave. I'm being selfish in trying to keep her away from me, Felicity. She's going to get hurt badly one day. And it will be me, and what she doesn't realize is that after that - I'll be alone."

"You'll have me."

Diggle shook his head and said. "That bastard made me his lab rat, and after all we did, after giving up our _souls_ \-  he's alive?"

"It's not him." She said, calmly.

"How can you be so sure?"

Felicity wasn't certain how to answer that.

"So you're saying he's a lookalike? Some sort of doppleganger?"

"I'm saying..." Felicity said, choosing her words, carefully. "That there are multiple universes that coexist, according to the best brain in theoretical physics."

"So he's Oliver - just _another_ Oliver?"

"Yes." Felicity said. "I believe so. This meta-human McNare, who robs banks - he can bend space. I think that's how he hid from Waller."

"Do you think there's any universe where he should be alive?"

Eight - maybe even five years ago, she'd have agreed with Diggle. She would have snapped the man's neck as soon as she got a chance. But - the way he smiled at her at first. Was it possible in his world, he was good?

_"You're not my Felicity." He had said._

Felicity thought of the way he touched her face, the warmth with which he looked and held her. She thought about the sudden kiss he gave - it was a kiss, only familiar to old lovers. That moment was a moment of reckoning for him, she thought of the stunned look he gave her when he backed away.

Like he knew he didn't belong there.

"Space and not time?" Diggle said, while she thought pensively.

"Only space - or I'd have him dissected." Felicity said, unfeelingly. "Barry and I are convinced there will be meta-humans who can bend time, though. I have Catilin on a lookout for them. If I can find one, it will make it easier for us. We can try and counteract the drug faster."

"But not stopping Oliver from injecting me with it?" Diggle asled.

"I don't think I want to go back to any timeline where that Oliver was alive." She shrugged.

"How can you be so calm about this? At least I get to have my Mr. Hyde moments where I forget everything."

Felicity didn't know. She was numb all around.

"You know me." She said. "I'm always calm. Maybe the fact that he's in maximum security helps."

"In a cell, which he designed." Diggle said. "Have you told Thea?"

"She doesn't need to be bothered with this." Felicity said. "And. It is classified for now."

"What if he gets out?" Diggle said. "Forget escaping, what if Amanda believes that he's this Oliver - of our world or whatever and is forced to let him out."

"Then she'll also be forced to arrest him." Felicity smiled, wanly. "He was deemed the accountable party for the Glades fiasco. And if she doesn't get him for that, the SEC will come after him. If they don't then there's SCPD and the FBI. And if the law won't get him, there are our friends in the Bratva, the Triads and of course - the League. But it won't come to that. If they release him, he'll be killed."

"You have people on the inside?" Diggle looked at her with relief.

"I always have people on the inside."

 

*

 

"He's asking for you."

It was past midnight. Lyla stood at her door and greeted her with that one statement.

Two weeks. Felicity hadn't slept - she hadn't been able to work properly and she couldn't rest. Her mind was running through permutations and possibilities. If her Oliver survived, what he might have done these eight years. What if he'd faked everything? What if it was really him?

She flatly refused to work with A.R.G.U.S. on the case. She wanted to have nothing to do with him - she just wanted to forget that the day ever happened that she cast her eyes on her first husband again.

("You can have my best scientists." She told Waller. "Let them have a look into it all. You can take my resources, even my friggin' money. But I can't be a part of this.")

"Felicity." Lyla said, looking at her with pained eyes. "He's _asking_ for you."

Felicity had no idea why, but she silently nodded and went to get dressed.

 

 

Felicity had worked with Waller and A.R.G.U.S. long enough to know that they wouldn't just acquiesce to a prisoner's request easily.

As she had suspected, this Oliver Queen turned out to be quite a difficult prisoner.

"He's received special training of some sort." Waller complained when they met. "After you left, he just shut down. He just sits in that corner - in that stupid yoga pose. Watching us. When he's not working out. Doesn't fight. Doesn't get provoked.  Doesn't answer. He eats sparingly, sleeps sparingly. He fought through the narco like he's been through it before. Not a word."

"There are ways to make a man talk." Felicity said.

"Torture?" Waller said, widening her eyes.

 _Yes_. "No." Felicity lied. "I don't mean that." But she wanted to mean it.

"It's like he's waiting for something." Waller said, shaking her head.

"Like what?"

Waller shrugged. "I don't know - the first time he spoke since that day, was two hours ago."

Felicity watched the looped replay of the feed. He was looking into the camera and saying _"I will speak to Mrs. Palmer."_

Mrs. Palmer.

Not Felicity.

 

 

When Felicity entered the cell again, this time, Waller had her armed with a gun, a taser and a collapsible baton all strapped underneath her clothes. The man just looked at her with a deadpan expression. Not with the relief, or heavy emotion he had when he beheld her the first time they met.

He sat in the corner, cross-legged with his back straight, and nodded at her when she entered.

Felicity chose a corner, diagonally opposite his and sat down in a similar crosslegged pose.

And they just stared at each other.

 

He broke the silence first.

"Is this some sort of dream - or a test?" He asked, softly. "Is this real?"

Felicity sighed. "What is your name?"

"Oliver Queen."

Her heart skipped a beat. She swallowed a lump in her throat and started. "Mr. Queen -"

"Mr. Queen was my father."

" _Mister_ Queen." She said, emphatically. "I don't believe you are in a dream."

"Is this some - other world? Like - an afterlife?"

"The working theory." She said. "Is that you are possibly not from this world."

He nodded like it was the most common thing for someone to say.

"That doesn't surprise you?" She asked.

"No - Felicity..." He breaks off and closes his eyes. When he opens them, she sees something raw. " _My_ Felicity." He says, with a hitch in her breath. "She had a theory"

She nodded at him to continue.

"The man that I..." He pauses, as though weighing his words. "I came here with."

"McNare?"

"Is that what his name is?" Queen said. "Cisco called him...Space-smasher or something like that."

"Cisco?"

"Cisco Ramone?"

"Do you mean Francisco Ramone?" Felicity frowned. Queen shrugged. He described Ramone to her almost in the exact way in which she knew the man.

"He's a scientist?" She said, disbelievingly.

"Yeah - why?" Queen frowned. "What is he here?"

"He's..." Felicity sighed. Waller had told her to limit the specifics. "Never mind." She said. "Right now, he's not important."

Queen looked at her curiously and then seemed to let the matter go. "Anyway - in my world, McNare is a thief. He robs banks and then just...disappears."

Felicity didn't tell him that it was the same in her world too.

"We caught him on a camera, just vanishing into thin air, once. That's when we realized he was a meta-human." He looked at her, quizzically. "Do you have those here?"

She nodded.

He sighed and continued. " _My_ Felicity." He said (and she did note the hint of affection and something else in his voice. Was it admiration? Pride?). "Believed that the reason we could never find him was that he was jumping between these alternate or parallel universes through breaches caused by..." He shook his head. "There was a particle accelerator explosion in Central City a while back - apparently they created some sort of portals to other planets or worlds or something." He huffed and then his face relaxed when he rolled his eyes. "I guess, I should listen to my girlfriend more often."

"You didn't believe her?" Felicity said, curious.

"I didn't disbelieve her - but I just didn't really think too much about it. She - she and Cisco found a way to trap him - slow him down actually before he jumps. I tackled him - and somehow I got pulled along with him."

"How does he know where the breaches are?"

"He can see them. Felicity thinks...she thought he had special eyes." He pouts a little, pensively. "She has more scientific terms for it all." He sighed and then rubbed his face. When he was done he gave her a look. "Aren't you curious at all - about what she's like?" He said.

"Who?"

"My Felicity."

Felicity wasn't curious at all. The way she saw it, if her counterpart was his girlfriend then she was an idiot who didn't know what she was in for, anyway. She shrugged.

Queen gave her a disbelieving look and shook his head. "She'd be bursting with questions, if she were here." He said. "She wouldn't stop asking them."

And Felicity really - _really_ didn't care.

"This universe or whatever it is - it's strange." He said. "Waller's weird - she's _nicer_. And that's saying a lot, given that she's keeping me captive. Lyla's - different too - she's. I don't know - softer in many ways. And you..." He trailed off, looking at her intensely...with longing.

Felicity didn't react.

"Mrs. Palmer, may I ask you something." He said, straightening his face.

Him calling her Mrs. Palmer was as strange as his description of Waller and Lyla. She nodded, anyway.

"Am I alive in this world?"

"No." She said, quickly. "Oliver Queen in this world, died in a shipwreck, eight years ago." _I think._ She added in her mind. _Unless it's really him underneath that facade you've put up._

He nodded.

"That doesn't bother you?" She said.

He shrugged. "I was in a shipwreck too - back in my world. It - it changed me. Didn't kill me."

Felicity nodded, unperturbed. Her theoretical physicist had told her that it was possible that events could appear similar in multiple universes.

"I take it then that we've -" He said. "You and the Oliver of your world - I mean, knew each other before the accident."

Felicity stared at him and then nodded slowly. He looked like he wants to ask her something but he sighed instead.

"You're handling this well." Felicity remarked, not knowing what to say. "Most people would have panicked - tried to escape."

"I've learned over the years, to accept help people from those who know how to solve a problem better than I can." He said, smiling at her wanly. "This science stuff and parallel universes aren't really my field of expertise."

"Why?" Felicity said, finding that odd. She frowns. "What exactly did you do, in your universe, Mr. Queen. I mean - for a living?"

"I - " He suddenly chuckles. The sudden light it brings to his face reminds her of the Oliver she knew. "This and that." He said. "What did your Oliver do?"

He was never _my_ Oliver. She wanted to say. "He was a scientist." She decided to let up some information. "An exceptional one." (And criminally insane, she wanted to add.)

Queen went silent, eyes wide - gaping at her.

"Why does that surprise you?" Felicity said.  

"I got a D in tenth grade algebra." He said, hollowly. "And flunked biology."

That surprised her; Felicity could not imagine a universe where Oliver wasn't an eccentric genius.

"Why did you ask to see me?" Felicity said. "Why not tell all this to them?" She pointed to the viewing window.

"It's been two weeks - I just - I don't want to lose hope. I need a reminder that it'll be okay."

"A reminder?"

" _My_ Felicity..." He said. "She's the smartest woman I know."

(Hearing the pride in his voice made her heart ache. The Oliver she knew never praised her.)

"I've been waiting." He continued. "I know that she's doing everything to bring me back."

"What if she thinks you're dead? Or maybe just missing?"

"Didn't stop her before." He shrugged.

"And what does that have to do with me?" She said.

"Nothing. " He said, looking directly at her.

When she frowned, he smiled like there was a secret going on between him and some imaginary person in the space between them. "I just - " He said, softly. "I wanted to see her face."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently the fic is longer than I thought.  
> or shorter.


	3. Earth X/Earth One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my readers,
> 
> Sorry for the late update. November madness. I'm so thrilled with all the reviews that I've been getting lots and lots of ideas! Who knew Sliders and a bottle of Pinot could stir so much fun?
> 
> I was going to split this into two chapters for dramatic effect, but then why toy with you when you've thrown so much love my way right?

Earth X

 

_"This man - is not Oliver Queen."_

He knew it when he kissed her. Her lips were still, her entire body frozen.

This woman was not Felicity Smoak.

It wasn't just the hair - or the hard, unsmiling look on her face. It wasn't the facade of practiced coolness around her, or her cautious, dignified gait. It wasn't that when she sat before him, she held an imaginary impenetrable wall around her.

It was the way she spoke. No emotion in her eyes.  No affection in her voice. Only clipped tones -  weighing each word.

She did not - babble.

That loud commanding voice - familiar yet different. There was elements of his Felicity (her so called: boss-lady voice;  the voice she used on him when he was, quote: "being such a douchebag about things") - but - there was also something vibrating underneath.

He saw something underneath it all - the first day he saw her. Underneath the obvious shock on her face, there was something that he recognized all too well.

Darkness.

(Not the Light, not like his Felicity.)

And so.

Oliver didn't care.

His curiosity died when he realized he wasn't where he was supposed to be. That _she_ wasn't who she was supposed to be.

His counterpart in this universe and her were attached in some deep way. And where that gave him some peculiar sense of consolation, it was also that knowledge being the only thing of value to him.

(Why else would Waller call her and not Thea, or Laurel or Diggle. Or even Tommy or his Mom if they were alive?

And he really couldn't wrap his head around how nice and - expressive _this_ Waller was. She interrogated him, sure.  She had a narco ordered on him, even.  But.  No one struck him or hung him upside down, or waterboarded him.)

The point was - Oliver didn't care.

When she rose, he rose. She didn't look at him with the same cautiousness she did when she entered. He stepped forward, calculating his next move and feigning helplessness on his face at the same time. 

(He felt like a dick about it. He didn't want to do it this way. But - after two weeks of trying and analysing his options, this was the only way out.)

 _Not my Felicity. Not my Felicity._ Echoed repeatedly in his mind.

"I hope you come by again." He said. 

He moved closer as she unlocked the cell using her passcode.

"Hey." Oliver said as soon as he heard the final key punch in. He kept an eye on the barred door as it unlocked with a clicking electronic sound, though it remained closed.

She turned around. He saw the expression on her face. Her guard was down.

He extended his hand. "Thank you...for coming here. For doing this. For me." (He meant the words, but - he didn't mean them the way they probably sounded).

She looked hesitant and then gave him a curt nod, extending her hand to meet his.

That was all he needed.

 

His Felicity would have shrieked when he yanked and twisted her arm. She'd be screaming all the way through. This woman merely inhaled with a sharp gasp and went completely still when he locked his other arm around her neck, pressing her back to his front. He reached for the pistol she had tucked behind her waist and pressed the barrel to her head.

(She sucked in her breath when his knuckles brushed against her skin. ever so slightly that if he hadn't been as observant as he was - he'd have missed it.

So different from his Felicity - yet so similar.)

"I am sorry about this, Mrs. Palmer." He said, truthfully (and yes, as much as he hated to use her like this - he also loathed the idea of calling her Mrs. Anything-else in any universe but -

_Not my Felicity._

He did not care).

She didn't flinch. She didn't scream. Her body was tense but her breathing was controlled. Oliver kicked the cell-door open and dragged her out.

 _Not my Felicity. Not my Felicity_ , was all he thought, aware that his grip on her was iron tight. He looked down at Felicity Palmer's brown head under his chin. He didn't want to hurt her even in the slightest, but he had to show them that he was serious.

"Now," He said, politely. "If you will please come with me"

The main door burst open and a group of agents spilled into the room, including Lyla.

"I thought your Felicity was going to rescue you." Felicity Palmer said. There was a taunt in her voice. "I thought you were going to _wait_."

"She _will_ find me." Oliver said, determinedly. "But, I've got to meet her half way, at least." He added, scrutinizing each agent, making a mental count of their firearms, scanning all the exits.

"C'mon Mrs. Palmer." Oliver said. "You didn't really presume I'd sit around the whole time, did you?"

"No, Mr. Queen." Her voice was soft - there was a strong undertone of resignation. "I did not presume so. But I didn't expect you to be this..." He could hear the wry smirk in her voice. "...Inventive."

_Not my Felicity._

Waller walked in with her pistol out of its holster, but not outstretched towards him. Her eyes diverted to Felicity Palmer's. She shrugged and placed the gun back in its holster. The other agents stood down immediately.

Why would everyone back down, like that? He wondered. Maybe someone would tranq him. He looked around; none of the shooters had tranq-guns.

Either Mrs. Palmer was too important to be injured in this universe, or unimportant enough to be sacrificed. Whatever the reason was, he couldn't be certain of anything.

"The Felicity you know must be a quite the doormat, Mr. Queen." Mrs. Palmer's cold voice drew his attention.

Something about the way she said his Felicity's name...with a veiled derision. Oliver felt irritated, instantly.  He jerked her neck backward and hissed. "Do not _think_ that I will not hurt you just because you look like the woman I love, Mrs. Palmer."

Waller was looking expectantly at Felicity Palmer and raised her eyebrows.

"Love." He heard Felicity Palmer echo the word, hollowly.

"I'm not going to hurt you." He said - feeling a twinge of pity for her predicament "But...don't think it's beneath me to do just that."

"Mr. Queen," Waller said, loudly. "You really have no idea, who you're dealing with here, do you?"

Oliver dragged Felicity Palmer towards the exit that he felt was most accessible - ( and - he noticed that she didn't struggle. And - he found it very strange. And - he was too preoccupied to dwell on it.)

"Agent Waller, I assure you," He said ."I've known better than to underestimate you." He said. He dragged Mrs. Palmer towards the exit.

"Not me..." Waller smirked, she cocked her head towards the woman in his grip. "Her."

When a blinding pain shot through his stomach, the blow was so pointed to his solar plexus that he doubled over. The next one came through his jaw - at a point where the pain was unimaginably crippling. Oliver was forced to let go and was greeted with a smack from someone's shoe. A right hook connected to his cheekbone - precise as the blow to his stomach, sending just that much pain to nearly take him out. Oliver rounded off and retaliated.

He blocked the next two punches and... in three moves,  he was flat on his back with the very same gun pointed between his eyes.

Felicity Palmer stood over him. Her eyes were calm, unmoved and - she appeared bored, but one only had to look into her blue eyes to see the icy anger. He felt pinned down by her gaze more than the weight of her foot on his breastbone.

(This pint sized, wisp of a woman, brunette Felicity had defeated him.)

Amanda Waller came up beside her. She shook her head at him like he was an errant child. "Like I said, Mr. Queen." She tilted her head towards Felicity Palmer. "You really have no idea who you're dealing with."

 

*

_Love_

Such a strange word. So small a word, for such a powerful emotion. So small a word to create so much havoc in human lives.

Felicity Palmer had loved only one man in her entire life. His name was Oliver Queen.

And he broke her to pieces.

The idea of any Oliver in any universe, loving her...

Felicity felt something stir within her.

And she couldn't described it.

 

 

He escaped from the cell two days after his first stunt -

And failed, sure.

But the point was he managed to escape.

In the glaring light of day, he escaped from one of the most secure facilities on the planet. Once, he was out of the cell, and he'd taken out the oncoming guards and fractured the surveillance cams. He was missing for three hours with A.R.G.U.S. agents scampering  around like headless chickens in pursuit. It was only perhaps that he hadn't known that they were on a secluded island-facility on the other side of the river with no open road to the mainland that he got caught.  They cornered him just as he was about to jump off the bank into the water.

He'd used a passcode to escape the cell. _Her_ passcode.

"There's no way she divulged it." Felicity overheard Waller tell her superiors on the phone. "We were watching them the whole time." Waller kept shaking her head while the other person spoke. "Yes- yes sir, we are aware the he did design the cell - but the security keys had all been handed over to us and they upgraded it since...Yes - no, no sir. No, I'm certain Mrs. Palmer did not help him."

Waller looked at her, widening her eyes as though to say: 'We're fucked'.

Felicity had to review the footage thrice to understand what he did.

"Maybe I should have him chastised." Waller said, after she disconnected. "Break a couple of bones."

"You're the proponent of humane imprisonment, not me." Felicity remarked, sarcastically. "We're going to issue you a free upgrade on that cell." Felicity added, plainly.

"What? Why?" Waller said, coming around the table to have a look. "What did you find?"

Felicity replayed footage from the camera directly monitoring him before he escaped.

Queen had a very unaffected look on his face. He braced the bars while the guard deactivated the electric barrier to hand him his lunch. In a split second, he punched in the passcode and knocked the guard out by slamming the cell-door outwards into the poor schmuck's face. It all went south for the A.R.G.U.S. agents after that.

The speed of his movements, the disarming of guards, the bruises and black-eyes, aside - what disturbed her was how clever he had been.

"It's the keypad." Felicity said, replaying the audio for Waller. "It's an old version. Apparently we overlooked it."

"Meaning?" Waller said.

"The tones of each key are different." Felicity said, playing the audio. "He recalled it. See the way he's turning his head there - like he's got his ear turned as he punches the keys" She leaned back and crossed her arms. "I think that's why he sent for me. He wanted to hear the codes."

Waller gave her a look.

Felicity shrugged.

"I cannot believe you held those skeleton codes all this time." Waller said. "What would stop you from selling them to an adversary?"

"I always keep the master codes to all the Palmer-Queen tech." Felicity said, dismissively. It's my insurance."

"Your 'insurance' nearly lost us the prisoner."

"Your _underestimation_ of him, lost you the prisoner." Felicity said, emphatically. "Need I remind you that whether he is from this universe or not - Oliver Queen, will always be what he is."

"And what is he, Mrs. Palmer?"

Felicity sighed. "Untameable."

 

*

 

"You're late, Mrs. Palmer."

Felicity looked up at her boss, nodding at him before she spoke. "Good morning, Mr. Wilson."

"You're never late." Slade Wilson remarked, holding the elevator for her. Felicity sighed as she stepped in, turning around to face the switchboard. Her boss followed her in.

"How was your trip to Melbourne, sir?" She asked casually, once the elevator doors were closed.

"Good, Shado decided to stay on a few days more." He gave a small smile. "I think she's taken a liking to my side of the family."

Felicity nodded quietly with an appreciative look on her face (but she didn't really care about Wilson's insipid wife; she was just being polite.).

"You're agitated." He remarked.

Felicity sighed, heavily, not looking at him. They both stared at the changing numbers.

"I've taught you better than this, Felicity." Slade said, sticking his hands into his pockets. "Emotions are..."

"A window to weakness." Felicity completed. Slade must have noticed her finger tapping against her thigh. She was so disturbed she didn't even realize she was giving in to her easiest tell. Even, if she was numb to all feeling, he would know what she was thinking. He knew her too well.

Wilson didn't like to discuss business in the elevator, so she said no more.

"The matter is grave. " He said, as the elevators opened to his office with a loud ding. "It's why I cut my trip short."

"I presumed as much." She replied.

"What's the update from our friends in ARGUS?" He said, once they were in his plush office in the top floor of the Palmer-Queen building.

"The metahuman has been captured." Felicity said. "He's been kept in a medically induced coma until they can figure out how to stop his abilities. We don't know where he's stashed the gold from your vault."

"Gold can be bought and sold any time." He said, nonchalantly. "The metahuman's abilities, though - now those are unique."

Felicity nodded.

"How soon can we have him?" Wilson said, after a small pause.

"We should be able to procure McNare for testing within a week." She said.

"I should thank his captor." He said.

She remained silent.

"There's something you're not telling me." Wilson said.

"Yes." She said, coolly.

"It's classified?"

"Yes." She said. "But that's not why I'm not telling you."

Slade regarded her curiously and then nodded in acceptance. He didn't press further.

"So, Mrs. Palmer." He said, changing the topic to the matter at hand. "Some information has come up from our friends in Central City. We've lost a batch of the Cerulean anti-toxin."

"A missing batch? " Felicity said, taking the seat in front of him. "Not the entire consignment?

"Yes." Wilson said. "Except, it's not missing."

"Sir - apart from the potential biohazard threat - I see nothing suspicious with a missing batch of anti-toxins."

"When specific batches of specific biologics have been lost over the last five years, I'd say it's bloody suspicious."

"Someone had been stealing from us?" Felicity looked at him quizzically.

He nodded.

"Sir, am I missing something here?" Felicity said. "We routinely use agents in bioengineering that aren't of much value - not even in the black markets. Was there something special about that antitoxin?"

"We thought they were just random incidents, until Dr. Snart intimated me. He didn't piece it together until recently. I reviewed missing batches from consignments over the last five years." Wilson said, typing something on his computer. "This is a list of unaccounted lost items." He pulled up a document and then turned to monitor to her.

Felicity peered at a list of items. They just looked like a list of unaccounted batches of biomedical serums and chemicals arranged in a random order

"The whole is greater than the sum of its parts." He said. "Do you know what that is, Mrs. Palmer?"

She shrugged her lips.

"That," He said, running a finger over the screen, "is a list of all the ingredients required to synthesize a very potent biological weapon. The QV-54."

Felicity's eyes snapped from the monitor and met Wilson's.

"Someone is trying to synthesize Oliver's virus?" Felicity said.

"There's only one element missing." Wilson said. "And that is an extract of the primer gene. I believe, your late husband hid the primer gene of this killer-virus in an incubator."

"We've destroyed every sample of this virus." Felicity said, emphatically. "Not even a paperweight survived from any of the facilities even remotely associated with its development. I made sure of it."

"All artificial incubators were destroyed, yes." Wilson nodded. "But what of the biological ones?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the primordial strain that resides within patient zero's body."

Felicity's blood ran cold.

"His first test subject?" Wilson looked at her with only a hint of sympathy. "Thea Queen."

 

* * *

 

Earth One

 

Felicity Smoak had been having a _great_ day when the call came in.

(And it all went to hell.)

Oliver had woken her up - (as in his _mouth_ did). Her eyes flew open, once the lazy climax overtook her to the vision of his naughty, victorious grin between her thighs. Then, when she wanted to thank him by making him breakfast (or at least attempting to cook without setting off the smoke alarm), the sneaky sexy-beast that he was, he seduced her - took her right there on the countertop (and then he made her the best post-coital pancakes as a bonus.)

Two orgasms at the start of her day and she wasn't even late for her meetings. Her wonderful assistant had taken care of all the official errands she had, and a great deal of personal ones (his way of expressing gratitude for her giving him the entire week off to take care of his sick mother).

She didn't spill coffee over herself, or on any other hapless employee at Palmer Tech. She babbled, but only sensible stuff -  stuff that people understood (granted, her audience was the R & D team and they were geeks like her). Her mouth didn't run off in the board meeting for once (and - any board meeting with no grouchy-faces from either of the directors was a success, in her opinion . She even managed to secretly sext with Oliver on the side, and didn't even have any slipups and - surprise, surprise - he _sexted_ her back!)

When Thea had informed her of the robbery at Starling National, she also managed to leave work instantly, without having to make silly excuses to anyone.

(It was a rarity for her - having a good day.

She should have taken it as an omen.)

Then.

Diggle called while she was driving to the campaign HQ

 _"It's Oliver. He's...he's... "_ Diggle's voice was hollow. He didn't complete. _"Felicity."_

 She hung up and slammed her foot on the accelerator.

 

_Thea and Laurel activated Cisco's device. Oliver lunged forward into the Spacebender. There was a burst of light. He was gone._

"Felicity. I know you miss him, but you cannot do this to yourself..." Diggle pleaded with her. "Again."

_(Thea and Laurel activated Cisco's device. Oliver lunged forward into the Spacebender. There was a burst of light. He was gone.)_

 

Death had certainty to it, is what Felicity would realize at the end of the two weeks that she spent analyzing every pixel, every decibel and every nanosecond of every video footage of the event.

_(Thea. And. Laurel. Activated. Cisco's device. Oliver lunged. Forward. Into the Spacebender. There was. A burst of light. He was gone.)_

John was wrong. She didn't miss him. Felicity didn't have time to miss him.

_(Thea and Laurel. Activated Cisco's device. Oliver. Lunged forward into the Spacebender. There was a burst of light. He was gone.)_

She had to find him.

_(Thea and Laurel had activated Cisco's device; Oliver lunged forward into the Spacebender... )_

She had combed through Thea and Laurel's body cams, through the SCPD squad-cars and chopper's surveillance, to the traffic cams; she even hacked into the cell-phone videos of bystanders who caught the scene. She spent the next week with Cisco trying to render the electromagnetic images and pulling satellite data. She sent probes through the breeches. She spent hours in discussion, analysis and frustration.

 _(...there was a burst of light...a_ literal, _blinding burst of energy...and...)_

Felicity felt consumed with desperation. She wondered, more than once, if this was a something to what Thea's bloodlust felt like.

_(...and...he was gone.)_

She only ate when Thea forcefed her (and Thea herself wasn't eating well - so it was more of the pot calling the kettle black sort of thing).

_(Gone. Gone. Gone....)_

She only showered when Laurel dragged her away from the consoles. More than once, she yelled at Curtis (and apologized later, sure but...she yelled anyway). She ignored work. She ignored all calls from the board, from Lance, even from what'shisface campaign guy, delegating the bulk of the lie-telling to Thea (and Felicity was pretty sure was the two of them were together - and that Oliver didn't know.)

The city ran into extreme chaos as Darkh's ghosts went on a rampage, now that the Arrow was gone.

_(Gone. Gone. Gone....)_

But she didn't have the time. She let the team handle it. They needed something to do. She had so much to do that she didn't have time to  sleep. Or eat. Or do anything. Except. Find a way to get him back.

Somehow. Anyhow.

(... _into a singularity, out through a white hole....)_

More than once she dozed off on her computer, more than once she woke up thinking she was in Oliver's arms, only to find herself being cradled by Diggle to the nearest bed, and more than once, she wept, with only Diggle to console her.

_(...A frackin' vortex....a rabbit hole in the space-time continuum. Down, Oliver fell. Like Alice.)_

Felicity had allowed the team to assume her frantic paranoia was out of the desire to find him (which was only half the truth).

"Do they even understand...?" Cisco would whisper every now and then looking in the general direction of Thea, Laurel and Diggle.

Felicity would think of the murderous rage and the bone chilling scream that Thea emitted while she attacked her opponents, be it in practice sessions or out on the field. Her bloodlust was aggravated by her anxiety for Oliver. Diggle was nervous about her. Laurel was worried for her. Felicity - was terrified for her.

"They won't understand." Felicity said, tears welling up and spilling over, every time. "It's just - too hard to explain. Let them hope. Someone has to hope."

Because she couldn't.

Barry, Cisco, Caitlin, Ray were the only people who comprehended the magnitude of this.

"Maybe he ended up on Earth Two or Three something." Caitlin would say to console her. "There's no reason to assume the worst..."

Felicity believed in the light. She believed in hope. She believed in everything that meant moving forward. Science helped her hope. Science was her friend. Logical reasoning helped her push forward. This time she wished she was ignorant of quantum physics.

Everything Felicity knew and read about space-time breaches; every calculation and simulation she ran; _everything_ \- made her paranoia worsen with each minute he didn't reappear.

The metahuman could manipulate the breaches. His molecules rearranged and converged into energy packets, whenever he jumped  and regrouped when he was ejected on the other side - and that process was what formed the basis for her and Cisco to develop the device to slow him down.

But Oliver was just human.

As magnificent and resilient a specimen of humanity that he was....he was still a plain human.

The love of her life, was sent in his plain human body...with no meta-human abilities, with no ability to voluntarily change his body from matter to energy...he was sent spiralling, through some space-time conduit.

"There's a reason Zoom sends metahumans through breeches." Felicity would argue back. "Their bodies can handle the space-time warp. Oliver's..." Felicity would trail off, every time.

They understood what she meant.

_Oliver - Oliver in his plain non-meta-human body might not...withstand the forces of the breach._

The physicist inside sat watch over her mind, like a demon, incessantly tormenting her with permutations and combinations of all the horrid eventualities of travelling through multiverse-breaches.

(How, either he could be ripped apart into a million untraceable sparks of energy, to the possible fatal injuries he would have if he survived, to ending up in some random un-breathable planet as a lump of charred flesh.)

"I can try speeding through the breeches." Barry offered. "Check each universe."

She flatly refused.

Though, she had seriously considered the idea even before he came up with it, she couldn't risk playing with Barry's life. Just, because he was seemingly fast enough to survive the weight of the fractured breeches. Not when Zoom was up and jumping about, universe to universe trying to kill him.

Felicity didn't have the heart to tell her team. She certainly didn't have the heart to tell Thea.

_Oliver's not a meta. Oliver's not a meta. He might not survive breach travel._

When Oliver backed away from her last year, because he thought he couldn't be the Arrow and with her at the same time, Felicity felt sorrow. When Felicity thought that Oliver might be dead, her insides tore within her. When she thought Oliver was lost to Ra's al-Ghul - she felt the forceful heartbreak of her father's abandonment a thousand times over.

Those experiences were about loss. At the end of the dark tunnel of loss - came reconciliation and hope.

This. This wasn't loss.  This was morbid fear.

This time he didn't retreat from her life out of choice. This time it was an accident. So freak, but so complicated in it's essential nature.

This time was much worse, because if he survived...she didn't know where he was.

And, if she didn't know where he was, how could she help him? How could she bring him back?

 

 _Maybe..._ she thought. _Maybe I'll go home and he'll be there. Maybe this was all a bad dream._

Her tears mingled with the wetness of the rain.

An already dark, new moon night, shrouded downpour with the night sky illuminated only when lightning cracked. Her feet were sore. Her pumps were ruined by the water flooding the roads. She was completely drenched - and she was certain her body was cold, even though she was numb to all feeling.

After a pointless session of running four complicated tracing algorithms that failed pathetically, to identify him through probes she'd sent in the breaches - Felicity realized that she needed to go somewhere...anywhere.  

Felicity left the lair to just walk - to clear her head.

But it didn't help.

She had avoided the loft for the last two weeks. Not just because she was desperately at work trying to find him but...because he wouldn't be there.

His scent and his presence always filled her life. Now, she would have to walk into an empty kitchen. She would have to open the fridge only to find stale food and takeout. She would have to walk past the counter, where they'd made love that last time and know she may never see the sight of him beaming at her, chopping vegetables, or mixing batter or kneading dough or peering through a cookbook or making her taste sauce. She would have to sit in an empty apartment.

His gentle voice, his loving embrace...they weren't there. He had become her home and he wasn't there.

Felicity sobbed as she looked up at their building. She closed her eyes and as the rain drummed on her head she imagined Oliver coming up behind her, embracing her, pulling her back onto her chest, kissing her ear, nuzzling into her shoulder. Telling her he loved her - and then adding some dirty sexy talk...just because.

She sniffled and snorted a small laugh.

"I have to clean the apartment at least." She thought out loud. "What if he's back and he sees what a mess I've left it in?"

She shook her head, shaking droplets away and was about to place her foot on the step when she saw someone come closer, from the corner.

A hooded dark figure, advancing on her through the torrential rain.

Felicity reached for her purse.

She'd forgotten it in the Lair. _Idiot._

She had nothing on her. No phone. No pepper spray, no taser...nothing. She blinked the rainwater away from her eyes and rushed up the stairs. There was immediate relief from the rain as she made it under the portico, though periodic sprays hit her because of the gale.  She flattened her back against the entrance door, when she realized she didn't even have the keys on her.

She looked at the person apprehensively, inwardly planning self-defence moves.

"You can do this." She muttered to herself. "You took Double-Down, with a machine gun with your eyes closed. Like. Literally."

Her breathing stilled as the figure came up the stairs. It was a man - for certain. The silhouette had something familiar about it, though she couldn't place it. Once he stepped closer into her space, she noticed that he was wearing a dirty old frumpy raincoat.

_Maybe it's just some homeless guy. Maybe he just needs shelter. Or maybe he needs help - maybe he's hurt._

"Felicity Smoak?"

Her heart skipped a beat. That voice. The way he said it.

_Felicity Smoak?... Hi! I'm Oliver Queen._

She was just imagining things, Felicity thought. No sleep, no food, brain-saturated with theoretical physics. It was not improbable.

The man lifted a hand and pulled off the hood.  His long hair was slick and dark from the rain, and she couldn't tell its true color. Under the halo light of the portico she saw his scruffy dirty blond beard. His face was thin, and cheeks were hollow. He looked like some hobo.

But.

The intensity in his blue eyes was unmistakable when he regarded her.

"Hi." He said, in a soft voice with no familiarity in it. "I'm Oliver Queen."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reviews are why I write fanfiction :winky:


	4. Earth One/Earth X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my lovelies.  
> In case you haven't read the update on the other fic, apologies on the delay. I was out of the country sorting out RL stuff.  
> Thank you for all your reviews.  
> reading them helped me get through a writer's block thing.  
> Again these were supposed to be separate chapters, but it's annoying as a reader when you wait long and you get a teensy snippet so.
> 
> and how angsty is 4 x 09?

_ Earth One _

Oliver had a Ph.D.

Well - not her Oliver, duh - but - like - this guy - like -

\- like _what?._

An articulate, scientific description of event-horizons, wormhole physics and interestingly clever theories of inter-dimensional travel, made perfect logical sense - except -

All. _All_. those words came out of Oliver's mouth.

(As far as uncertainties were concerned, one might add - that - Felicity was also unsure how she just _let_ this man - _whoever­ he was­ -_ waltz into her apartment, and how she just _let_ him stand there dripping all over the floor...)

"I thought you said your doctorate was in bioengineering?" She said stupidly, when he finished his explanation of breech-dynamics.

"I have three Ph.D's actually." He said, non-chalantly. "One of them is Quantum Physics"

Unlike the Oliver she had known, the aura around him was not silent and contemplative, but calculating and smug. From the instant, they'd met he'd been eyeing her with a completely different manner than her Oliver did.

(Also.

The only thing creepier than Oliver having a Ph.D -?

Oliver having _three_ Ph.Ds.)

__

_ Earth X _

 

He escaped - again.

 (And succeeded.)

Felicity didn't expect anything less from him.

"I have to give him credit for creativity," Felicity said, wryly as she fumbled through her drawers.

"Are you joking?" Waller looked at her incredulously.

"You know me." Felicity flicked her brown hair back as she dug into the very last drawers. "I don't joke."

"How am I supposed to release a BOLO out on a dead man?"

Felicity shrugged.

"What were you planning to do with him, anyway?" Felicity said.

"We need information on the meta."

"Why? You already have him."

"I can't keep McNare in sedation permanently. I need intel on the machine his - people on the other side built."

"The machine that Mayor Ramone's doppelganger built in his world?" Felicity said blandly. "You really believe that the dumbest politician in Central City's history could have a smart counterpart somewhere who builds a machine that can slow down McNare?"

"Well, the guy is a spin doctor."

 _No kidding,_ Felicity thought, snorting when she thought about Ramone. The man certainly knew how to market criminals and tragedies alike.

"Amanda," Felicity said, seriously, when something else occurred to her. "This man doesn't really come off as a guy with any scientific grasp."

"But he might be explain the theory....maybe your Dr. Snart could y'know...try from whatever principle they used to...?

Felicity shook her head.

"He managed to stowaway in my fuckin' car, Felicity!" Waller snapped.

(Felicity noted the expletive - after all, Waller seldom cursed. This Oliver Queen was right - Waller was nice, too nice.)

"Which is the only car, that isn't checked before it leaves the island." Felicity said, "It's interesting and creative - _and_ \- it's what I would have done."

Waller eyed her suspiciously.

Felicity raised her eyebrows at her. "You aren't seriously considering, that I helped him escape are you? If anything, I want that man locked up and as far away from Star City as possible."

Waller said nothing while Felicity went back to checking her drawers.

"You know what your problem is Agent Waller." Felicity said, and giving up when she couldn't find what she was looking for.

"No, but I'm sure you're about to enlighten me Mrs. Palmer."

"You haven't coerced him...enough." Felicity said slowly.

"Torture is illegal." Waller said, giving her a definitive glare.

"But effective." Felicity said, shrugging her eyebrows.

Waller was about to say something when Felicity's phone started to beep.

_Thea -_

She had activated her panic alarm.

 

*

 

There were many things that Oliver had come to expect from Thea whenever he returned from the apparent dead. Relief, Anger, disappointment, pain, joy -

\- this disaster of a panic attack wasn't it.

This wasn't the Thea he expected. She was so thin, her cheeks were hollow with the cheekbones jutting out at him almost hideously. Her dye-blonde waist-length hair had multiple shades of orange, pink, purple and green panelled through them like some sort of freak-show. The garishly applied eyeliner was forming black streaks over face as she cried, but her eyes - they weren't even his sister's eyes any more. They were glassy...empty.

Her first reaction to seeing him was wide-eyed disbelief, which Oliver mistook for natural shock, given that his counterpart was dead in this universe. But, the ear-piercing scream that she let out, the morbid fear on her face as she backed away from him - the way she grabbed her ears and shook her head, begging him to leave her alone, begging him to not touch her...

Any and all attempts he made to reach her were met with an exacerbation. Every time he called her name, tried to calm her down her shrieking became worse. Every time she lifted her eyes to look at him, it seemed like her fear became worse. Every time she crouched her head, she kept echoing to herself: "He's not real. He can't hurt you, if he's not real." And every time she looked up at him, it seemed as though the conviction failed, and she was forced to face his physical verity of his presence.

Bewildered and shaken, Oliver could only sit before her cross-legged within the distance she would allow him and wait.

While his sister - her doppelganger - shrivelled away from him, crouched down in the corner of her apartment rocking herself, her body.

 

It was inevitable - he realized - that the person bursting through the door to her rescue, would be Felicity Palmer.

Between her shrieks and pleas, and constant iterations that he wasn't real, Thea would whisper her name occasionally and momentarily calm down. "Felicity...she'll come...he's not real - Felicity will come." 

And so he waited.

 

When he looked up at the murderous spiteful expression on the face he loved on a woman he did not know, when she slammed her fist into his cheek, he just let her kick the crap out of him. She went for his stomach and he didn't even cry out with the pain,  she went for his chin next and he didn't even hiss, she wrestling him onto his front and locked his arms behind his back and he - he just let her.

Oliver was aware of the tears seeping down from his eyes to the floor as he kept his eyes on his sister.

As he fell down to his side, he remembered the helplessness he felt while he fell to the ground with his hands tied behind his back as Slade impaled his mother while Thea - his Thea - was forced to watch.

He felt something bite into his wrists as he kept his face towards his sister, weeping and sobbing and reaching her arms out to Felicity. When he felt the weight of Felicity's knee release off his back, he realized she'd bound him tightly with very high tensile strength wire but he didn't struggle against it. She left him there with the shooting pain in his abdomen and the blinding misery in his heart and she rushed to Thea, wrapping the younger woman into her arms.

It was only then that he felt any relief whatsoever.

This Felicity locking This Thea into a strong comforting embrace and shushing her.

For that brief interval she wasn't the cold, unfeeling Mrs. Palmer. For that second, he saw his Felicity while she rocked her Thea into silence. The kind, caring woman who somehow knew how to calm his raging nerves - the loving protector of his conscience, the defender of his soul. In Mrs. Palmer's voice, he heard his Felicity's gentle soothing voice, caressing Thea into silence.

He _had_ to get back to his world.

He had to be with his Felicity again.

Once Thea's sobs became quieter he noticed Felicity Palmer reach for something. He sighed when Thea slacked, unconscious, in her arms. He sobbed when he saw Felicity rise up, stumbling under the weight of Thea's limp body.

Hard-ass or not, her small size wasn't in her favor.

"Wait..." He sobbed.

The instant her blue eyes connected with him, it was almost as though the light had gone out. Within seconds her pistol was out, barrel aimed at him, the silent warning in her eyes plain as day.

"Let..." He choked on the words. "Let me help you."

Anger and incredulity flicked on her face. Her eyebrows quirked like his Felicity's did whenever she got annoyed at him, except this wasn't annoyance  - it was controlled hatred.

Mrs. Palmer went down on her knees, keeping the pistol fixed on him and she let Thea gently down on the floor.

Oliver's head craned up as she rose up and stepped towards him, reaching for something in her waist. She slapped open what he recognized as a baton and rammed it against his thigh.

Oliver screamed as pain shot up his leg, and rolled onto his back. She hit him with it twice - hard, against his calves and against his shoulders. As before her blows were so pointed, it impaired him, even if it didn't debilitate him entirely.

But the pain didn't consume him, nearly, as much as the vengeful hatred in her eyes, when he found himself staring up into her eyes, with the baton place obliquely at his throat, pushing down on his windpipe.

(At least she put the firearm away.

That had to be a good sign.)

Oliver was numb and in pain at the same time.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here?" She hissed.

"I..." He looked up at her pleadingly. "I don't know."

She glared right into him.

" I...I wanted to see my sister."

"Why?"

"Why?" He echoed and coughed under the pressure of the metal rod. "She's my sister!"

She was scanning his eyes, like she was looking for motive. He was so confused that it took a full minute to realize it.

"Please, Felicity - Mrs. Palmer!" He begged. "I don't know what your Oliver was like, but - in my world - we're close...I'd never hurt her!"

Disbelief flashed in her eyes in response.

"We - I -  I -  didn't know she'd react this way. I swear to you, if I had, I wouldn't have come!"

Her face stoned up - her eyes went distant. For an instant silence overtook that moment.

"Are you really from another universe?" She said, with a hollow voice.

Oliver saw the loss in her eyes.

"Yes." He said. "I survived a shipwreck in my world." He said. "And I met you, _after_. And in my world _you_ love me. In my world..." He turned his head towards Thea, wincing under the pressure of the baton on his neck. " _She_ loves me. She doesn't _fear_ me. So, I am begging you, at _least._..let me help you carry her." He looked pleadingly into Felicity's icy blue eyes. "Then you can do whatever you want with me. I promise you, no tricks."

_I loved you in this world, too._ She thought.

When she kicked the door open, he didn't even turn to look at her. He sat there, cross-legged looking at the mess Thea was with this completely shattered expression on his face.

Not with the sadistic pleasure that she knew her Oliver took in watching Thea's suffering, that only Felicity had been privy too.

He didn't even put up a fight.

She looked down at his pleading expression and wondered. Was it just coincidence that he was here, while someone out there was trying to rebuild the QV-54?

Doubt flooded her, emotions warred within. What if Oliver had survived? What if this whole thing was some sort of ploy to get to Thea?

But. If there was one thing that Oliver had never been able to hide from her, it was his viciousness, particularly towards Thea. Even at the times he'd pretended to love her for public display, Felicity could see the resentment seething underneath.  

 _This man_ loved Thea. She could see it in the pained expression in his eyes. She could see it in the helpless concern she saw on his face. He could not be _her_ Oliver Queen.

She released him.

 

 

He cradled Thea with so much gentleness, that Felicity felt that same old feeling stirring within her again. She watched the tender affection with which he lay her on the bed and pulled the covers over her. She watched him kiss her forehead and then straighten up. 

"What did you inject her with?" He asked her, as he came around, he extended his hands up at her in resignation, like - like he was showing her that he wasn't going to pull anything funny.

She wasn't going to take any chances, though.

"A sedative." Felicity said, binding his arms behind his back.

He turned his head and looked back at her, while she was doing it.  "You've had specialized training." He said.

"Why?" She jibed. "Your Felicity doesn't pack quite the punch?"

He snorted, shaking his head. "Not like this, no."

She shoved him towards the direction of the hallway.

"Why does she fear me?" Queen said, while he went co-operatively in the direction she'd moved him towards. "Why -I don't understand - what sort of person was Oliver Queen - in this universe?"

"The worst kind." Felicity said. "He hurt her, very badly. He hurt a lot of people. Deliberately."

He looked at her in disbelief - and it took a moment of silence and him searching her face for realization to dawn on him, that she was telling the truth. Felicity watched the man's shoulder's droop and his head hang.

She motioned for him to sit down at Thea's pathetic excuse for a dining table. Felicity realized he was wearing  an A.R.G.U.S. standard issue T-shirt - he probably stole it. But - how did he...? "How did you get out of the cell?" She asked.

"I found the failsafe power-supply." He said, blankly.

Felicity tensed. The Oliver she knew, had designed that cell - was it possible this was all an act?

"My Felicity." He said, before she could prod. "She told me that most electronically secured jail cells have a fail-safe to keep prisoners from getting killed in the event of a force-majeure. I figured this universe couldn't different on generics. Took a chance." He shrugged. "It paid off."

The explanation seemed reasonable enough - if - what he said about his Felicity was true.    

"Why does she live in this tiny, dinghy hole?" He said, looking around.

"The light bothers her." Felicity said, sadly. "She's - photosensitive."

"You care about her." He said, looking up at her. "My sister? You care for her."

She didn't reply. It occurred to her that she should probably inform Waller, but - something about his defeated posture, his helpless expression...Felicity felt drawn to him and wary of him at the same time.

He shook his head, as though he was contemplating something.

"John Diggle?" He said, looking at her, suddenly.

Felicity's head snapped up.

"He's my friend - in my world. He's - the closest thing I have to a brother. We - we're allies." He said.

She peered at him cautiously, didn't say anything.

"He's ex-military."

Felicity went towards the dining table and pulled out her gun, keeping it on the table, raising her eyebrows at him.

He acknowledged her warning and waited as she went to pour a glass of water for both of them.

"Barry Allen." He said. "He's a meta-human. He's our friend. Really - really fast. But he's - a hero, he's not like this Space-smasher guy."

That peaked Felicity's interest, but she made no show of it. She fetched a straw for him - because she wasn't about to untie his hands. He raised an eyebrow at her unspoken decision but did not object.

Felicity held the straw till he bend down and caught it in his lips. She backed away and sat on the opposite side.

He had the most beautiful lips. Her Oliver had beautiful lips - so - it was logical that this man would have it too. Felicity had been so drawn to her Oliver back then - she wondered if the Felicity in his world was taken up by the same spell as well. 

"Laurel Lance." He said, after he was done sipping, breaking her stream of thought.  "She was - she is - she's my friend. She's a lawyer - and an ally." He shrugged. "Thea stays with Laurel - Laurel looked out for her when I...I went missing. Her sister Sara - she's - well, we were complicated at one time, but she's alright. She helps people."

Hearing the Canaries names' brought bitterness within her. If he hadn't seemed so earnest Felicity would have burst into a fit of ironic laughter. Those sisters having a respectable profession in any universe?  Felicity would like to have seen that.

"My mother, Moira Queen." He choked the names out. "My father, Robert Queen - Tommy Merlyn...my best friend...they're...they're dead."

Felicity's head tilted to one side. His face wore the same tormented expression again.

He looked up at her - his eyes glistening. He cleared his throat.

"My name is Oliver Queen. I'm running for Mayor, in my world. I'm also a vigilante, in a way. I used to be called the Hood, but now I go by another name..."

"The Hood?" Felicity interjected.

He was the Hood in his world?

"Star City is dying -" He said, ignoring her surprise. "And I'm trying to save it. My sister Thea Queen - she's running my campaign - and she helps me...at the y'know vigilante thing. John Diggle used to be my bodyguard, but he's my best friend...my girlfriend, Felicity Smoak she's - "

Felicity's eyebrows twitched at hearing her maiden name. It felt like a lifetime ago since she was called by that name. It felt like a different person ago.

"Felicity - she's..." He trailed off and sighed.

 

How could he describe what his Felicity was to him - to their team?

Oliver looked at Felicity Palmer.

Her face - as lovely as his Felicity. She wore a soft brown sedated tone of lipstick that complemented her beautiful ash brown hair. Her hair was just a little longer than his Felicity wore hers these days, and it rested easily on her shoulders in soft waves. She didn't wear glasses. Her wry smiles that didn't reach her eyes, had ghosts of dimples on the side - reminiscent of the sunshine grins he'd left behind on his earth -  but that was about it.

And her silence - oh god-  how her silence killed him.

How was he supposed to described the sunshine to someone who seemed to represent the night?

"Say something." He begged.

She reached for the gun and fingered it, as though pondering something. She picked it up as she rose and came around towards him. Oliver exhaled in relief thinking he might have broken through to her. She might tell him something - anything. He wasn't sure what he would do with any knowledge from her, but maybe it would help him focus.

A sharp pain shot through his temples - and as his world went black, it occurred to him that she had slammed the handle of the pistol into his head.

 

 

_ Earth One _

_This is a hallucination._ Felicity thought. _Maybe I'm sleepwalking....Oooh! Maybe I'm in one of those sleep-deprivation dream state thingies._

The man cocked his head and looked at her curiously. He shook his head and said, "It's not a dream."

"I just said that out loud, didn't I?"

He nodded.

"That too, I guess." She muttered.

The corners of his mouth quirked up. And she saw - him. Her Oliver. That amused half-smile with the ever so slight twitching of the eyebrows.

"Y'know, Miss Smoak." He said, when she caught him staring at her.

(Something about the way he stared at her - it was just...off.) 

"We know each other in my world." He spoke while using the towel she'd handed him to ruffle through his hair. "She's nothing like you." He said.

Something flashed in this man's eyes - something dark and akin to sadness because she noticed how his eyelids dropped at the word: _'She'._

She nodded, completely clueless as to what she was supposed to do or say next.

"What's um..." Felcity stuttered. "What's um - different about her or me?"

"She's..." The man looked away. "She's tough...doesn't talk too much."

"I actually would like to have that quality." Felicity said, surprised that indeed a universe did exist where her brain functioned the way she wanted.

He smirked. "She's a..." His eyes diverted up to the crown of her head. "She's got brown hair."

"So do I." Felicity said, shaking her head. "I dye it."

He seemed amused by that.

"It was supposed to be a secret." Felicity said, dumbly.

He smirks. "For the other - she's more physical."

"Physical?"

"She's smart, like you -" He said, "but - she's more of a strategist that a scientist."

"How do you mean?" She said, quickly.

"She used to be an agent for A.R.G.U.S." He said. "I've heard, she's gone private, now."

"What? Like seriously?" Felicity's eye popped. When he nodded, she said, "I'm not sure if I'm impressed or grossed out."

"You're taking this pretty well." He said, tilting his head at her. "I presume the concept of alternative universes is not implausible in this universe?"

She thought of Cisco, the alternate Dr. Wells, the alternate Flash who lost his speed - and of Zoom.

"How did you land in this one?" Was all she could manage to ask.

Felicity had acquired the habit of looking into Oliver's eyes intently over the last three years. One - because, he had this magnetic gaze, which seemingly had powers of its own - kinda like x-ray vision, and it held a person where they were; and two, because if there was any window in Oliver's tormented soul, it was through his eyes.

This man was miles different from her Oliver. She couldn't put a finger on it, but it was almost as though there was this wall between them.

"That's a very long story, I'll be happy to tell you." He answered. "But...first, I need your help."

"My help?"

"As the CEO of Palmer Technologies, you have access to everything, including your technical properties. I need the prototype of the singularity stabilizer that Mr. Palmer built."

"And you expect me to just _give_ this to you?"

"For our mutual benefit, of course."

He pointed to the pictures on the tables, on the walls. Photos of her and Oliver, in intimate embraces, taken during their time away from Star City. Felicity felt her heart bleed as she looked at them.

"Your boyfriend - my counterpart - the Mayoral candidate?" He said. "He's mysteriously disappeared over the last few weeks. I also know the Green Arrow disappeared into thin air while chasing down a bank robbing meta-human in the Glades." When he saw her facial expressions he quickly added. "Don't be so surprised, Miss Smoak, that much about is public domain knowledge. We have the internet in my world, too and I know how to use it."

(Also, he was a talker. Oliver never talked this much.)

"It only takes clever observation and an understanding of biometrics to deduce they are the same person. From whatever gossip I've read on social media, it seems to me like you two are very much in love. And. I'm ninety percent certain that you must be searching for a way to get him back from whatever universe he's disappeared into."

"The quantum stabilizer is an experimental device for studying infinitesimal dark matter traces - not large interdimensional breeches." She said.

He looked at her curiously. "Indeed it is - but the physics of it is sound. I need to borrow Mr. Palmer's device to model a larger one."

"And where will you get the raw materials?"

His lips curled outwards in that charming Oliver-Queen smile. The one that would have easily swept Felicity off her feet, if she hadn't seen the complete disconnect in his eyes.

"I was hoping you'd help me with that too." He said.

Her sense of self-preservation kicked in as soon as he said that.

"You also need to shave." She said, handing him a disposable razor, with the dry clothes, that belonged to her Oliver, directing him to the bathroom.

She locked the bathroom and called Diggle to give him a head start...and then, Barry.

 

_ Earth X _

"Are you sure sedating him is the way to go?" Lyla asked her.

"I recommend it." Felicity said, rubbing her knuckles, sore from the punches she'd thrown at him. "He's not going to stop trying to escape, Lyla. And - he's resourceful."

Lyla shook her head, and noticed Felicity was reaching for her cigarette pack. "I thought you quit," She said.

"So did I."  Felicity said, shrugging her eyebrows and lighting one. "What do you have for me?"

"It's not A.R.G.U.S." She said. "They're not interested in reconstructing the QV-54. It's too dangerous."

"Since when is anything too dangerous for your organization?"

"It is a weapon that cannot be controlled." She said. "All experimentation related to the QV-54, demonstrated that its effects are exponential and irreversible."

Felicity took a puff and flipped through the dossier. "Then who's trying to rebuild Oliver's virus?"

"Technically it is part John's..." Lyla remarked, sadly.

"John created the original splice to help enhance memory in dementia patients." Felicity said. "The evil part of it was Oliver's."

"Which part is that?"

"Whichever part's the evil part." Felicity said, puffing out smoke.

"Are you sure it isn't him?" Lyla nodded, her head towards the CCTV feed of the sedated alternate universe Oliver Queen.

"I think he's just in the wrong place at the wrong time." Felicity said.

"What if it's someone from his universe, or another?" Lyla said. "The meta was jumping dimensions stealing money - what if that's not all he stole?"

Felicity blew the smoke out in rings and considering it. "You might have a point there." She said.

She was about to ask Lyla about John when her phone flashed a message.

 

*

 

"Mrs. Palmer. Mr. Wilson." Dr. Snart greeted them without looking at in their direction. He was furiously typing at the computers, wheeling his chair about frantically.

"What's happening?" Felicity asked Snart as they walked into Palmer's elite research lab.

"You're not going to believe this." Snart said. He pulled up something on the large wall-display.

"What is it?" He said.

"That is a map of all the inter-dimensional breeches in Star City."

Wilson looked at the image with surprise and said, "How did you...?"

"The meta uses breeches in the multiverse, as per what you told me - so I figured there has to be a way to identify them...."

As he launched into a very elaborate explanation of the satellite and electomagentic spectra which Felicity really didn't care for, but politely pretended to fake interest in because clearly Mr. Wilson wanted more information, she went towards the large display.

"So..." Felicity said, once he was done. "What's this mean - can we travel through these breeches to recover our money?"

"No - I'm afraid not." He said, "But something interesting happened - it's how I stumbled upon the correct spectrum readings."

"What?"

"You see that large one over there - it was really small about twelve hours ago...I think someone's trying to make it larger -"

"How do you know it's not a natural occurrence?" Wilson said.

"Because they're using the Palmer Satellite."

 

_ Earth One _

"Felicity..." Barry said. "I don't even...I mean, it's not improbable, at all that he's from another dimension...it's just...he's..." He trailed off staring at Oliver 'three-Ph.D's' Queen.

"Creeping you out?" Felicity whispered. "Join the club."

He'd cut and washed and cropped his hair looking like the Oliver she knew. Clean shaven, wearing her Oliver's clothes -  if it wasn't for the _thing_ about him that was driving her insane, the thing that was so _off_ \- she might have run straight into his arms and kissed him.

The man seemed amused that she'd locked him in the bathroom until Barry arrived. When he saw Barry, he pulled out a handheld device, from his discarded hobo-trench coat, and looked at Barry with interest. "You're a meta-human." He said. "Intriguing."

"Why?" Felicity said, cautiously. "What's that?" She pointed to his device, even though she already knew it was something similar to Wells' metahuman detector watch.

"Well, it would appear your friend has supernatural speed." Queen said, jabbing stuff into the device.

"You can tell all of that from that?" Felicity said, surprised.

"And more - blood type, DNA - I can identify the speed-gene markers in your blood too." Queen said, casually. "Why? Don't you have these in your universe?"

"Not quite as sophisticated." Barry said, begrudgingly. "So do we call you Dr. Queen...?"

"Technically my Ph.D's were stripped...I might've pissed off the Dean of Star Univeristy but..." He shrugged. "Dr. Queen works though. And you are...?"

"You don't know me?" Barry said, after introducing himself.

"Should I know you?"

"We've never met, in your universe...?" Barry said. "Or do I not exist?"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Allen." Dr. Queen said. "I sort of... _disappeared_ from my world about eight years ago."

"Why?" Felicity said. "And. Where were you all this time?"

He gave her a long look and smiled. "It's a long story, one I'm sure I'll find time to tell you, but for now, I need the stabilizer."

Neither she, nor Barry reacted.

"Look," The man said. "I realize this is all very overwhelming but - if there's any chance for you to get your Oliver back, I'm it. This can scan DNA across breaches, provided they are sufficiently large enough. It's all I need to identify which universe your Oliver's gone. But to widen the breeches I need the stabilizer."

"And what's in it for you?" Barry said.

"I need to get back to my universe." He said, his face dropping.

"How do we know you're going to deliver on your promise?" Barry said.

"I guess you're going to have to trust me." He said, plainly.

Barry looked at Felicity.

It was odd, Felicity thought. When Oliver walked into her life, she saw goodness in him. His ridiculous requests and blatant lies, bothered her but didn't prevent her from going to him after Walter disappeared, it didn't prevent her from trusting him.

This man's reasons were more plausible than her Oliver's excuse. Everything he said made a lot of sense, but that was the thing -

-Felicity didn't trust him.

And she didn't know why.

 

_ Earth X _

 

If it was up to him - she'd be naked all the time.

It's was a sultry summer night in Bali. They had opted to stay in one of those less than fancy resorts, in a room with a perfect view of the sea - and that was it. There was a broken fan which moved with a slow creaking noise, no air-conditioning, plenty of mosquitoes and room service was laughable.

Oliver looked on at Felicity, amused and smitten at the same time, while Felicity gesticulated with big hand movements to the staff trying to get them to understand that the WiFi was not working while they gaped on at her as though she was some strange creature.

"Phew!" She had said when she'd closed the door, once they'd settled in. "I guess - that's it. We're officially in the land of no connectivity and I'm - completely stumped."

Felicity had changed into a beach shirt - those Indian style slightly transparent embroidered ones which ended just after the curve of her beautifully shaped ass, with slights by the side that revealed just that much more of her shiny smooth skin. Through the fabric she wore this ridiculous fluorescent bikini that Oliver had taken quite a liking to.

Oliver gave her a sympathetic look and then came around and kissed the back of her head, before he started to pull the sheer mosquito net around the bed, swatting away the bugs.

"I am completely useless without a network." Felicity declared as she tossed her phone into her suitcase and chucked her laptop into its sleeve.

Oliver winced as the bed creaked when he sat on it and then wiggled his eyebrows at her. Felicity huffed, distractedly. She tossed the sheer aside and climbed into the bed, kneeling beside him. She tested her weight against the bed, making funny faces while it creaked.

"We can go to a better place." Oliver said, lying down. His eyes drifted to the curve of her hip as she snaked down to lie on her side, facing it. The shirt rode all the way up to her waist - the fluorescent orange side strings of her bikni peeking out from the hip.

"Or...?" Felicity sighed, trailing her index finger over his body, lazily. "I was thinking to go to the beach..." She looked at him nervously. "If you're okay with that."

Ever since they'd come away together - his nervous apprehension  towards the sea subsided over time.

He caught her hand as it moved towards the collar of his shirt. He caught it and placed a soft kiss on her fingers.

"Why'd you pick this place, anyway?" Oliver asked gently.

"The beach - is like right there." She said, rolling her body sensually towards him, until her face was close to his.

"And..." Her voice dropped. "I kinda wanted to do it...in the midnight...under the full moon."

"Did you, now?" He grinned and bent his head to claim her mouth.

"Oliver..." She mumbled against his mouth.

"Mmhmm?"

"Is this what you want?" She said, still nibbling kisses.

"Oh yeah..." He palmed his hand up her bare thigh. "Definitely."

"No..." She drew back and smiled at him. "I mean - does this make you happy? Being away from Starling and our friends and Thea - and y'know - _not_ being the Arrow any more?"

"Felicity." He said, cupping her face. "You - make me happy."

Her blue eyes held hope and excitement in them while she searched his. As though hearing him say that was a novelty.

The bed creaked as he pushed her shoulder back onto the bed and he climbed over her. "I love you." He whispered as he kissed her neck. Her neck twitched and she gasped in response - like he expected.

"Oliver..." She whispered.

"Yes?" He mumbled, against her collarbone.

"It's time to go." She echoed in his ears.

"What?" He mumbled.

_"Ollie, come on, it's time to go!"_

Felicity never called him Ollie.

"Ollie, come on!"

Someone was shaking his shoulder. Sirens were ringing. Lights were flashing.

His eyes flew open.

It took him a few minutes to readjust to the light but once the blurry edges resolved her saw a blonde woman standing over him - except, she wasn't just any blonde.

"Sara?" He croaked.

Sara beamed at him. "Aww," She coos. "Look how cute he looks when he's sleepy!" She tilted her head in the direction of his body. "Ooh! Lookie - he's got morning wood too! How sweet!"

If he wasn't shocked, he'd have probably found it in him to be embarrassed.  

Another head appeared in his vision by Sara's side. Oliver blinked to clear his vision, when he realized that it was Laurel grinning at him.

"Come on, babe." Laurel said, kissing him quickly, on the lips.  "It's time to go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \------>  
> There's more....  
> but your reviews make me feel so special...so...tee hee hee


	5. Earth X

_ Earth X _

 

This universe was fucked up.

In a million different ways and on at least a billion different levels.

Fucked. Up.

Quentin Lance was a sleazy crime lord.

And if that wasn't bad enough.

His daughters were - for lack of a better description - strippers.

"Exotic dancers - who take their clothes off, from time to time." Lance corrected, chewing on his cigar.

"Forgive me, if I seem out of line here...Captai- I mean Mr. Lance." Oliver said, unable to believe what he was hearing and saying. "But - aren't they your _daughters_?"

"Yeah - so?"

"Is this - the life you....envisioned for them?" He said, unable to take in the sight of Lance's gelled hair, flashy suit or the ridiculous diamond watch on his wrist.

Then he again, he reckoned, if the choice was between being blinded by Lance's blingy watch and looking down at the island-stage in the club at the sight of Sara and Laurel dancing provocatively (which was an understatement, because Oliver was pretty-sure the way they moved with each other bordered on incestuous behaviour in any universe) in a large cage...

...he chose the watch.

"What you got hit in the head or something?" Lance was looking at him with a funny expression. "You're acting like this is all new to you."

"Er - yeah?" Oliver offered, unsure of whether he should tell Lance the truth or just go with it.

"It's not like I'm one of them hillbillies who make babies with their daughters. I don't exactly pimp 'em out - but y'know, if they wanna make a livin' the way they wanna do it...I ain't gonna stand in the way." He shrugged. "I prefer..." Lance said, "to live the fuckin' bohemian way, Queen. You gotta motha'fuckin' problem with that?"

"Nooo..." Oliver drawled, widening his eyes in defensiveness. "No sir, I do not."

(Because he didn't belong to this fucked up universe and he didn't care to amalgamate.

Ever.)

"Didn't fuckin' think so." Lance said, nodding at him. "Besides, who'd believe those innocent faces are capable of raising so much hell, huh?" He burst out laughing at his own joke.

(Five minutes with him and his gelled hair and colourful language and Oliver was certain that Lance was not a Captain or anything close to law enforcement in this universe.

Oliver didn't have much time to process Sara and Laurel. The minute his feet hit the floor, he lost control and collapsed knowing it was the effects of the anaesthetic that kept him under for as long as it did. Oliver had a vague memory of Laurel and Sara trying to drag his partially limp body out, through the chaos and blaring sounds of the sirens, combat and gunshots but what he couldn't recall was how he ended up in front of Lance.

The best was to describe Lance would be Felicity - his Felicity's - straightforward _Ew!_

-  and the idea of the Lance sisters serving as his minions on their spare time when they weren't dancing - _like that_.

Fucked up - didn't even begin to describe it.)

 

 

**

 

 

"Are you still convinced this isn't your husband?" Waller was shooting daggers with her eyes. "You said this man is too... _kind_ , so he couldn't be your husband. When he escaped, you said that he was too _stupid_ , so he couldn't be your husband. When he attacked your sister-in-law, you said he was too _emotional_ , so he couldn't be your husband. So how do you explain the link with the Canaries?"

McNare was gone too - most likely taken by the Canaries.

(Anyone who knew the Lance sisters had only take a look at the shattered glass to recognize the MO. A description of all the acrobatic feats they liked to pride on, the battered A.R.G.U.S. agents described was only added information.)

"How would they have communicated?" Waller was saying. "Did he contact them when he got out?"

Felicity didn't care to speculate. She noticed that they left the evidence cells untouched. She studied the green hood, the bows and arrows. She reflected over the typical calluses in this Oliver Queen's hands, based on whatever little contact they head. She thought over his combat moves as she remembered them from watching the surveillance feeds from his prior escape attempts. His first instinct - whatever situation it was, was to reach behind his back, like he was reaching for the quiver. He engaged in hand-to-hand only _after_. It was as though the bow and arrow were an extension of his body.

Felicity Palmer identified with that. She felt the same about her guns.

Muscle memory. Oliver - _her_ Oliver - had described it, once, in a time when she believed in the impossible.

(They were lounging in the afterglow of their intimacy. Those few moments when she felt inclined to smile unreservedly, losing herself in the tenderness of his touch and his warm embrace, his soft hands sliding up her forearms and examining gun-callused palms, before intertwining his own fingers with hers. 

A life of love and togetherness with him.

The Impossible.)

So, every possibility she played out, didn't add up to him leaving the bow and arrow behind. It could only mean that this Oliver wasn't privvy to the plan.

"Something's going on, Mrs. Palmer." Waller said.

"Do you think, I'm lying Amanda?" Felicity said, just as her phone rang.

"No Felicity," Waller softened her tone, shaking her head.

"I agree - something's not right." Felicity said. "This all feels - _planned_  somehow." Felicity looked down and saw that Caitlin Snow was on the line and decided to ignore it.

"Planned?" Waller echoed.

"His prior escapes were sketchy and uncoordinated. I'd say he escaped by luck and will, at best." Felicity answered. "He never went for McNare. This one - feels dodgy - like someone else was trying to get to them."

"Why so?"

"I don't know." Felicity sighed, rubbing her forehead.

The phone rang again, flashing Caitlin Snow's name again.

There were only two occasions when Caitlin Snow re-attempted calling Felicity without waiting for Felicity to call back in Felicity's years of acquaintance with hers. The first time was, when they discovered that Shado Wilson's mysterious illness had been symptoms of the QV-54 innoculation and the second time was when there was an explosion at the old Steel factory which used to function as Oliver's lab.

"I have to take this," Felicity said, excusing herself.

 

 

**

 

 

"Eight years - Queen," Lance said. "Don't you feel like giving me a hug?"

Did he and Lance hug in this universe?

"Erm?" Oliver hesitated.

Lance snorted and pulled out a glass whisky flask and laid two glasses out.

"Yeah - uh - Mr. Lance?" Oliver said, shaking his head. "Wh- why did you have me rescued?"

Quentin frowned at him.

"Humor me." Oliver said, tapping his temple trying to convey that he was hit in the head, and had memory lapses.

Quentin looked at him as he poured the golden liquid in both glasses. "I don't ask my clients questions, Queen, you know that."

"So, if I presume that..." Oliver caught the glass as Lance slid it across towards him. "That um - someone paid you to have me...extracted..."

"I'd say you've got a pretty nasty head injury to be speaking that way." Lance said, after taking a swig. "And -" He raised an eyebrow at Oliver. "That you'd be correct."

"May I ask whom?"

Lance shrugged. "You'll have to ask Sara." He leaned back in his chair and jerked his head towards the club. "D'you like my new set up?"

"Huh?"

"I call it the _'Birdcage'_!" He actually sounded proud of it. "'Cause y'know Black Canary, White Canary...maybe I should add a coupla' robins with blue bras - get it? Robin's breasts?"

Oliver gave a non-committal smirk resisting the urge to gag; Lance could might as well have called it 'The Zoo' for all he cared.

"So..." Lance wiggled his eyebrows at Oliver. "You and - uh - Laurel gonna do some reminiscing? Not that I object - if she's doing it on her downtime, it's okay with me. I always liked you."

Oliver really, _really,_ didn't know how to answer that.

"She missed you, y'know. Guess you were the one."

"The one?"

"The one that got away - y'know like their Mom - she was the one that got away for me."

Oliver took a long sip, and focussed on the bitter liquid washing down.

"So what if we put a couple in her head, eh?" Lance remarked. "I still miss Dinah."

Oliver spat out his whisky.

"What?" Lance said, "you don't like it? It's pretty fine single malt, Queen - if you don't like it, there's no need to waste it."

"Did you just confess to shooting your wife?" Oliver said, in disbelief. When Lance looked at him seriously, Oliver added. "My memory's all fuzzed up."

"Seems like it - no - no I didn't confess to shooting my wife." Lance sighed and downed the rest of the whisky in his glass. He winced at the obvious burning in his throat,  squinted his eyes and then exhaled.

Oliver heaved a sigh of relief.

(Momentarily.)

"I mean," Lance said. "Laurel shot her, Sara knifed her and I just shoved her off the terrace."

Oliver just stared. It appeared to him from Lance's complete and utter non-chalance, that this was something his doppleganger in this universe clearly knew. He raised the glass to his lips and chugged the whisky down, gasping as the acrid feeling rushed down his throat.

(Fucked, fucked - blatantly fucked - this universe.)

"Aah!" Lance said, sighing. He poured them another round. "It's good to see you again, Queen. We missed you."

Oliver wished he could say the same for himself.

"When that ballbustin' wife of yours said you were dead. Didn't believe it for a fuckin' minute."

"My wife?"

"So, does she have two husbands now?"

"My wife?"

 "Yeah"

"My wife?" Oliver said, cleared his throat.

"Felicity Queen!" Lance said, frustratedly. "That cold, black-hearted bitch you married? Man! Brrr!" Lance made a mock shiver. "I cannot imagine what hitting that was like. Did your dick freeze?"

Oliver couldn't respond.

_Felicity was his wife._

_This_ Felicity was _This_ Oliver Queen's wife.

Oliver squeezed his eyelids shut, feeling pain in his eyes that wasn't physical.

 

**

 

Mr. Wilson was never a man to show emotions - particularly surprise. So it had to be a pretty fucked up thing to get him to react the way he did to Caitlin Snow's information.

"Let me get this straight, girly!" Wilson bit out. (He only called anyone 'girly' when he was beyond livid.) "You're telling me that H.I.V.E. is behind this?"

Caitlin Snow, who for the most part did  not like being threatened, kept her face straight. He was aiming for the messenger, Felicity realized.

"Mr. Wilson?" Felicity said, calmly.

"What?" He snapped his head towards her.

"Do you mind if I smoke?"

Wilson looked at her as if she'd grown another head for an instant. It _was_ an absurd thing to say, but it was all that took for Mr. Wilson a few seconds to gather himself. The distraction worked, he regained his composure and nodded at her. As she reached for her cigarettes, he reached for his desk, after a few seconds of fussing around he tossed something at her.

"I thought you quit?" Caitlin asked her.

"So did I." Felicity answered mechanically, as she caught the object her boss threw at her.  She anticipated it to be a lighter and so it was.

"I thought..." Wilson said, a little calmly. "We took care of the Damien Dahrk over two years ago." He jerked is head towards Felicity pointedly.

Felicity blew a puff and nodded at Caitlin.

"Damien Dahrk isn't all of H.I.V.E." Caitlin said, matter-of-factly.

"But he was a significant portion of it - enough to cull it's growth."

"But did you uproot it in its entirety, Mr. Wilson?"

Wilson sat back and sighed. "You have a point." He rubbed his face. "So, whoever's the new face of H.I.V.E. is trying to rebuild the QV-54. They used the space-bender to swap universes to procure the necessary ingredients."

 _Ah yes, H.I.V.E._ Felicity thought, sarcastically, not caring to express it out loud. _The mysterious boogeyman organization that comes from nowhere, and probably will go nowhere._

"But, there's just one problem..." Wilson added.

"Oliver Queen." Caitlin said. Felicity felt her ears twitch, but she showed no response.

"Oliver fucking Queen." Wilson agreed. "He's the only one who knows how to make the virulent strain. John Diggle's as good as a vegetable in his state..."  (Felicity winced at the callous rejection of her friend's state of sanity but no one noticed. She drew a long puff, trying to control her emotions whenever she thought of John.) "...he's no good to rebuild the virus."

"So - I'm guessing you're not going to like part B of my information." Caitlin sighed, looking at Felicity.

"There's a part B?"

"Yes." Caitlin looked at Felicity. "I'm afraid your first husband is alive, Mrs. Palmer."

Felicity rolled her eyes. She half-expected this, it was only a matter of time before Caitlin found out.

Wilson looked towards her.

"I'll stop you right there." Felicity said, presumptively as she blew a puff. "The man that A.R.G.U.S has is not Oliver Queen..."

"...of this dimension, or universe or what it's called." Caitlin said, cutting Felicity off.  "I know."

Felicity blinked.

 

_A shot so loud, her ears rang._

 

"What -?" Wilson interjected. "Felicity," He said, quickly (she always startled a little whenever he said her first name.) "What is she talking about?"

"It was classified, Mr. Wilson." Felicity said, hesitantly. "I'll explain - later." She frowned at Caitlin. "Ms. Snow, there is enough reason the presume there are multiple Oliver Queen's in multiple universes." 

"I'm not talking about the man they found on the interstate, Mrs. Palmer," Caitlin said. "I'm talking about the man you married."

 

_She was aiming for his head. But...the look in his eyes. She hesitated..._

 

"H.I.V.E. managed to retrieve him. " Caitlin said, slowly.

 

_She hesitated, so John made the call when Oliver's ironic laughter wafted her over the raging storm and the violent turns of the boat._

_He cut the ropes._

 

"I saw him die." Felicity said, feeling  _something_ starting to rumble within her. "I've confirmed it."

 

_Her index twitched and the gun fired - obediently._

 

"Mrs. Palmer," Caitlin said, looking at her with pity, "He _was_ wounded, badly."

 

_Her hand was still trembling, after._

 

"It's not possible." Felicity ground out, stubbing out the cigarette.

 

_Oliver's eyes widened in shock as his palm covered the wound. As lightening cracked she saw the large red stain seeping through the drenched white shirt he wore - over his stomach._

 

"It was a near-fatal gun-shot wound to the stomach. He was in a coma for several months. But H.I.V.E managed to resuscitate him."

 

_He looked at her with those piercing eyes, stunned - and then that smile spread over his face._

_Like he thought she wouldn't' go through with it - but was proud of her that she did._

 

"He's been in hiding. Some island of the coast of North China."

 

_She watched the mast swing - as though in slow motion, pinned to her spot. She watched it slam into his head._

_Just like that he was gone._

 

"Mrs. Palmer, there is also enough evidence I have to prove that he was shuttled through universes after the breeches emerged."

 

_She watched the pole swing towards her, her tears mixing with the rain. She wanted nothing more than to die with him._

_To die with Oliver. Her love - the Liar - the manipulator - the killer - the demon - but her love, nonetheless._

_John lunged at her, pushing her out of the path of the masthead as the ocean seemingly rose up in vengeance, and consumed the boat._

 

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Palmer." Caitlin said. "Your Oliver Queen, is alive."

 

 _"Felicity..."_ John Diggle's voice echoed in her mind as Caitlin spoke. _"This man cannot and should not live."_

 

"And..." Caitlin said, looking between Slade and her. "There's more."

 

 

**

His body was weak. Unexpectedly weak.

Oliver looked at his image in the mirror and examined the bulk of his muscles. It was atrophy - from keeping him in a coma for the brief while they did.

But his soul - his soul had a weariness that he could not begin to assess.

Oliver felt weariness like that before he committed his allegiance to Ra's al Ghul.

The Lance of this world didn't seem to hate him as much as the Lance of his own. He came by every now and then, tried to make conversation. Oliver chose to remain reserved for two reasons. First, because he didn't want to divulge his true identity; secondly - he really didn't want to talk. Period.

Lance ensured he was fed well, indicating that whoever wanted his escape, wanted him alive. It had been three days since he was hiding out here, in the attic of Lance's disgusting club. At first he was so overwhelmed he didn't even have the will to run. When he later, he realized how weakened he began to prepare, taking advantage of the isolation. He needed to get out of here before Lance's client came for him.

This universe was so fucked up - there was no way he could make anything right.

He had to get out of here and he couldn't do it now, while his muscles were so weak.

Oliver jumped off his feet and latched onto the sturdy iron bar of the attic of the _Birdcage_ and began to pull up, as slowly as his muscles groaning in protest would allow. He grunted, ignoring the pleas from his stiff abs as he relaxed and pulled up again, breathing in a manner familiar with his training.

He thought of Captain Lance - the brooding sense of righteousness. He thought of his Laurel - her strong sense of morality. He thought of his Sara - her brave resilience.

He calculated having spent at least six weeks in this wretched timeline or dimension or universe or _nightmare_ or whatever the fuck this place was. He had tried in the first four weeks, calculating every possible way to escape; now that he was out, after he knew what he knew - he wondered if he should have opted to stay in that jail-cell.

He wished he could unlearn every single thing he had heard or seen of this world.

As his mind diverted to the pain of his body, he allowed himself to think of his Thea - her fiery, vivacious spirit. Finally, he allowed himself to think of his Felicity - and her bright, loving smile.

 

 

Laurel had come to him that night, just after  he stumbled into bed with the realization that Felicity was married to him in this world.

She gave him a sly smile and began to walk seductively towards him.

It occurred to him then, that he'd never been faithful to his Laurel in the life he had before Lian-Yu. But, Oliver could never for once imagine being unfaithful to Felicity.

As she began to undress Oliver had looked at her dispassionately and said only one thing. "Did I cheat on her?" He asked.

She had frowned. "Quentin, said your memory was off." She said, after a long silence.

He flinched when she called her Dad 'Quentin' - it was so _wrong_. So unlike the Laurel he knew.

But then again, the woman before him was a Laurel who committed matricide.

"Were you and I lovers while I was married?" He asked, staring into her eyes, feeling his voice tremble.

"Ollie...do we have to...?"

"Don't lie to me." He had said, looking at her meaningfully.

"Did - I cheat on my wife?" He said, his voice wavering as he said the word _'wife'._

"She's a cold woman." Laurel answered. "I'm pretty sure you weren't happy with her."

Felicity's silence had been baffling to him - but then, when Laurel said those words - the force of realization hit him, in a focused and debilitating manner - just like the force of Felicity Palmer's punches and kicks.

He saw so much more than coldness.

Pain.

He saw pain - of betrayal.

"That's not an answer." He said.

Laurel Lance stood there staring at him, in her glaring makeup, and skimpy lingerie.

"You're still in love with her?" She said, shaking her head. "After all these years - has nothing changed?"

"What?" He blinked.

"No." Laurel said, looking like she was about to cry. "You never cheated on her. Even when you should have, you didn't."

He didn't know why he cared. He didn't know why he wanted to cling to that knowledge, so badly. Maybe it was the fact that he was stuck in this universe for so long and things were melding together. Or - maybe it was the fear that he might have to become a part of this wretched world.

Oliver bounded off the bed and grabbed Laurel by her arms. When she winced, he loosened his grip. "Why?" He growled. "Why are you here then?"

Tears streamed from her face. "I'd hoped that -" She whimpered. "Maybe....you'd want to, at least now...."

She jerked away from him, sobbing, heavily. She grabbed her clothes and hurriedly putting them on. Oliver looked on at her, feeling sad and sympathetic for her.

 

 

Oliver grunted as his arms trembled uncontrollably and he dropped to the floor. The image of Felicity Palmer gathering an inconsolable Thea Queen protectively in his arms lingered in his mind. He allowed his body a minute of rest and then dropped to the floor to do push ups.

He thought about the Oliver of this world.

 _"The worst kind."_ Mrs. Palmer had said. _"He hurt her, very badly. He hurt a lot of people. Deliberately."_

What if Felicity Smoak had never become part of his life in his world, Oliver thought. Would he have the purpose and direction that he did?  _"Has it ever occurred to you that you can actually do some good?"_ His Felicity had said. _"Instead of just crossing some names of a list?"_

"I don't get it." Laurel had whined. "I don't understand. You always complained about how cold she was! You resented her! I don't understand what power she holds on you!"

"She was my wife." Oliver responded, knowing he couldn't lay claim to Felicity Palmer, but something inside him began to feel possessiveness for her.

"She hated you." Laurel had said, as she went to the door.

"Maybe, I deserved it." Oliver had growled and turned his back to her, not flinching at the sound of the slamming door.

 

He only managed to pull three push ups when his body gave way again and he collapsed onto the floor.

She looked at him with such cold hatred. This Felicity Palmer.

This Felicity, who was this Oliver's wife.

The exhaustion from the forced anaesthesia may have taken over his body; but that terrible knowledge was the one that threatened to overrun his soul.

 

**

 

"I wonder what it is." Felicity said, as she peered through the binoculars at the neon sign of _The Birdcage_ and sighed. "That the worst men in the world seem to want to marry me."

"You knew what Ray was when you married him." Slade said to her, re-lacing his boot.

"I assure you, " She said, coldly. "I didn't know he was H.I.V.E., Mr. Wilson." 

Slade snorted before he stretched the bowstring with ease and a grace that Felicity admired and fired the zipline to latch on to _The Birdcage's_  roof. He tested it's tension and then fixed the other end to the hook they'd set up on the roof of the building they had perched on. 

Felicity watched her boss don his large green hood and adjust his quiver, before attaching the pulley to the cable and motioning towards her.

She hated heights - but then again, she hated a lot of things.

Slade met her eyes, he placed a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.  "Are you sure about this, Mrs. Palmer?" Slade asked her.

She nodded and swung. 

 


	6. Earth X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BIG general thank you for all your reviews. I love you guys for being so kind to me especially because I retrospectively find so many typos that I blush with shame.  
> I've clearly underestimated how many chapters it will take though we're coming closer to the end. I promise I will thank you all personally later.  
> I figured a quick update this week can't hurt because I've got some RL stuff coming up.

A crash and an explosion.

One would assume that he would at _some_ point get used to it all.

He bounded off the bed, his heart thumping furiously in his chest, reaching for a crowbar that he had snuck out from Lance's office during their frequent single malt-admiration meetings before he opened the trapdoor. The sounds of fighting, gunfire, shouting and screaming became louder.

Oliver slunk down the ladder, ignoring the protests of his tired muscles landing softly on his bare feet on to the landing of to face the other side of the fire-exit to the VIP balcony of the club. The commotion appeared to be coming from inside the club. The music didn't stop - despite the sounds of shrieks and chaos.

The vibrations of the thumping bass grew louder as he stole his way in. The firefight was obviously in the main arena. The balcony and private enclaves where completely trashed. Cushions and bills of money were strewn between broken glasses that leaked unconsumed alcohol that seeped through the expensive velvet carpet.

Oliver crouched and made it to a vantage point to survey.

It was bedlam.

Sara, Laurel, Lance and his men versus a group of soldiers in black uniforms with no identification and most certainly special-ops training.

Lance was crouched behind the bar, firing his semi-automatic whenever he wasn't throwing curses to make a sailor blush. Sara and Laurel had taken to hand to hand combat while Lance's men provided cover fire. The other girls in the club ran for cover screaming as did some hapless patrons of the club who couldn't seem to find a way out.

As though that wasn't enough drama, the roof caved in. Literally.

He felt a rush  of emotion, as he watched the silhouette of a man descend landing in a crouched position while a hailstorm of glass pieces and wooden shards showered all around him. The flashy music boomed, as though it served as a twisted version of a theme song for the entry of the man. There was a few seconds of ceasefire when all parties remained stunned as a brawny tall man with his headed shrouded by, a rather familiar green hood, rose, drawing his bow and arrow.

It was a short-lived moment, whatever it was.

Within seconds firing began in all directions making the prior bedlam seem like an organized civil demonstration. The Lances were firing at the Hood and the soldiers, the soldiers were firing at the Hood and the Lances, the Hood was dodging bullets, firing arrows in all directions.

There was no doubt in his mind about his identity.

"Slade..." He whispered to himself, as he peered at the Hood's moves through the rails of the balcony.

Oliver turned his head towards the side hearing the muted sound of glass crunching. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, he whirled around on his haunches, the crowbar ready to strike, to meet the blue eyes of Felicity Palmer.

She didn't have a gun aimed at his face for once, so that had to be a good sign, right?

"Enjoying the party, Mr. Queen?" She said, wryly.

Oliver just blinked at her.

"I er - no." He said, rising cautiously even though he was strangely happy to see her. She was much shorter than he remembered. His eyes drifted down her shift to moderately high heeled combat boots.

She looked like she was ready for war. No form fitting business dress, no view of her shapely legs, no pumps, no makeup. Her brown hair was piled up on the top of her head. She wore a fitted bomber jacket, over fitted cargo slacks with the handle of at least three firearms, two military daggers sticking out of the pockets and he was certain the hem of her jacket hid a lot more than just a narrow waistline.

It didn't escape him that this would be what his Felicity looked like if she decided to go all GI-Jane.

But it wasn't her physical appearance that had him transfixed.

There was no  hostility on her face. Her eyes didn't scrutinize him with the coldness that he began to associate with Felicity Palmer. There was something familiar about her which he couldn't identify.

"I um..." He jerked his head back to the pandemonium downstairs. "I'm not sure which side I'm supposed to be on."

Her mouth was pursed and it seemed as though the corners were twitching.

"The Hood." She pointed to Slade. "is with me."

"Slade Wilson?"

Her eyes widen. "You know him?"

"Yeah, he...taught me how to use the bow. On the Island." He said and then frowned. "How do you know him?"

"I work for him." She said. "Those men are H.I.V.E. They're after your sorry ass."

"There's a H.I.V.E. in this universe?"

"There's a H.I.V.E. in yours?" She said, frowning. "Interesting." She sighs. "They hired the Canaries to retrieve you. There's been a disagreement on the payment and the Lance girls are going to lose."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because they've underestimated the situation, as always. They're outmanned and outgunned as always, and they're cocky little bitches who leap before look, as always." She shrugged her eyebrows. "Sara, especially."

Clearly, no love was lost between the Lances and Mrs. Palmer.

"So there are your options." She said, quietly.

"And there's you." He said, wondering why he feels like teasing her.

Her eyes met his.  "There's me." She agrees.

"You've basically kicked the crap out of me every time we've met." Oliver said. "You expect me to just up and surrender?"

She tilted her head to the side. There was madness in the background and yet her blue eyes were calm and almost playful.

It was a smile.

"Yes." She said, as though that was supposed to be enough.

"I guess..." He found himself flirting. "I'm on your side then. Whichever..." He waved his hand towards the encounter below. "That is."

"I guess so." She acknowledged, her eyes meeting his.

He placed what was so familiar about her.

That furtive smile. A genuine smile. Not a cold sneer. Small dimples appearing under her cheekbones and the corners of her delicate mouth widening gently, as though with amusement that she wanted to show but preferred to hide.

Felicity's smile. _His_ Felicity's smile.

 _Ah shit!_ He'd developed a crush on his girlfriend's alternate universe counterpart. His Felicity would give him hell if she knew.

"So, what?" He said. "We're going out the frontdoor?" He motioned to the arena.

She had a duffel backpack suspended on her shoulder. She shrugged it off and handed it to him, silently. Oliver took it cautiously and then went down on one knee to unzip it. Inside he found his gear and his suit.

He looked up at her with surprise.

"If you're not too attached, then I suggest you wear those leather pants later, Mr Queen." She commanded, softly. "We're running out of time."

She had a submachine gun hooked on one hip, under the hem of her jacket. She drew it out and went towards the balcony and ducked, resting the gun gently on the rails. Oliver observed how perfectly poised and precise her form was.

He quickly slipped on his shirt, his vest and the hood, though it didn't make sense to cover his head. He strapped on his quiver, noticing some brand new enhanced arrows and made a mental note to thank her for them later, as he readied his bow. He found an unfamiliar pair of standard issue military boots of his size.

"My shoes?"

"A.R.G.U.S. took them apart." She said. He could detect a hint of an apology in her tone. "Apparently, they thought it had some special equipment for dimension jumping."

Someone shot the sound system and the music in the background went flat. By the time Oliver was ready, had zipped up the backpack and suspended it on his other shoulder there was a louder set of gunshots and the sound of the over-sized chandelier crashing to smithereens on the floor of the arena.

Sara let out a feral sound. "That was my favorite, you motherfuckers!" She roared and lunged physically, taking out two H.I.V.E. soldiers simultaneously.

"Always a pretty mouth, that one." He heard Mrs. Palmer comment. "Let's go?" She said, looking at him.

"After you." He said.

She could be leading him to his death, for all he cared. But, nevertheless, Oliver felt a relief so deep within his bones for the first time since he ended up in this godforsaken universe.

 

*

 

"Oliver was my husband." She said, as she opened the door to the fire-exit.  She met his eyes as he went past her into the landing. "But you knew that." She said, when she saw his face. "I presume the Lance's don't know that you're not him."

Mr. Queen nodded, keeping his mouth in a firm line.

"John Diggle." She said. He stopped abruptly to glance at her. She motioned for him to follow her.

"He was a scientist - a bioengineer." She said, rounding around him to go before him.  "He was Oliver's closest friend and best man at our wedding."

"Was?" Queen said, keeping his bow ready.

"He created a virus to help cure post-traumatic stress in soldiers." She said. "Oliver wanted to make it into a weapon. He deliberately mutated it to make what we now call the Queen Virus. The final strain was called QV-54."

As Queen trotted down the stairs after her, he peaked over the metal balustrade and saw movement below that she noted as well. He paused, kept his arrow aimed and shot down a series of three H.I.V.E. soldiers one after the other.

There was beauty in his movements, Felicity noted.

She spoke, as she looked over the fallen men. "He decided to forgo animal testing. He used Thea as his lab rat. He kept innoculating her under the pretext of getting her blood tested. Once he perfected the virus, he infected John with the next version. We never knew until it was too late for both of them. The effect was catastrophic. Psychotic episodes, paranoid schizophrenia, photo-sensitivity - early dementia - a long and painful death."

Felicity couldn't gauge his reaction because she couldn't see his face. He skipped two steps, jumping before her, protectively.

He was definitely one for chivalry.

He turned around when they heard a noise from the higher levels. Felicity saw how deftly he drew and fired a charged arrow setting off a small explosion, throwing those men off.

There was no doubt in her mind that he was trained by Slade Wilson - or whatever version of Slade belonged to the other universe.

"What's his deal with Thea?" He asked, after the smoke settled and they began to move again.

"I never understood his hatred for her." She said, sadly.

Queen stopped in his tracks at the step below her and turned up to look at her face - his expression was filled with disbelief.

"Oliver was a complicated man." She said, motioning for him to move forward.

He didn't.

"She was his half-sister." Felicity said, when she realized he wouldn't move until she answered.

"Thea is Malcolm Merlyn's daughter in my world, as well." He said, as though what she said wasn't enough for him. "Biologically she's my half-sister there."

"The Queens were a simple working class family." Felicity said. "His mother  just - wanted more. Moira cheated on his father. Robert adored Moira, and when he found out about the affair he took his own life. After which, Moira married Malcolm. Oliver never forgave them and he despised Thea."

He stayed still and said nothing.

"Whenever he got obsessed with something." Felicity said, "He wouldn't stop until it consumed him. I never knew where he found the money  to start Queen Science. What I didn't know then was that he'd collaborated with H.I.V.E. They mass produced the final, more fatal, aerosol version of the QV-54 - it took out nearly half the city. Moira and Malcolm died within twenty-four hours of the dispersal."

"How'd you stop it?"

"John did. He was still lucid back then. I don't know exactly how, but he managed to develop a vaccine, despite his health."

"Is he dead?"

"Not yet."

"Not yet?" Queen said, with a small incredulous laugh.

"He generated some treatment of sorts." She said. "I wouldn't call it a cure. I guess it only stopped the disease, but didn't reverse it. What you saw that day is what's left of her. There was only enough for one so John opted to save Thea with it. He saved some small boosters of the vaccine which slowed down the progression in his body - but it's only a matter of time."  

She saw how his face sank. Felicity felt overwhelmed with sadness as she thought of John, too - suffering, emaciated...dying.

"What about Tommy Merlyn?" He asked.

Felicity's head shot up in surprise. "He - wasn't in town during the outbreak. Why?"

"Tommy died in my world." He said, slowly.

"Thomas Merlyn's alive in this one." She said. "He runs Merlyn Global."

Queen's face seemed to relax.

"He - he and Oliver were always rivals." She said. "They were never friends in this world."

"Still..." He said, slowly. "It would have been nice to see his face, again."

"I don't think that's such a good idea, Mr. Queen."

He straightened his face. "You're right."

She gestured for him to start moving, but he didn't budge. "How did you find out?" He asked her. "About Oliver being - what he was doing?"

"I only found out after John developed the vaccine. Oliver was furious with him - and I never understood why until I found out that the shadow investor of Queen Sciences was a man named Dahrk."  She noticed him flinch when she said the name. "He worked for H.I.V.E." She added. "He _died_ a couple of years ago."

She noticed how Mr. Queen's face relaxed when she gave him that news. He turned around and descended to the ground floor.

Felicity opened the back entrance door and slipped out into the alleyway first, keeping her pistol out.

"Watch out!" He hissed as a shadow jumped in front of them.

Felicity ducked and rolled just as a man tried to tackle her. She heard the zip of an arrow above her and rose to find that Mr. Queen had taken out another assailant. She locked her arm around the neck of the man who was trying to capture her, tightening over a pressure point, until he fell unconscious.

"Were you affected by the virus?" He said, coming up to her, looking at the man at her feet.

"I don't know how..." Felicity said, "..but he developed the virus to select specific persons with specific genetic markers.  I don't know why he chose to spare me. " She said, her voice trembling with small sobs.  "Oliver was always brilliant - and wicked in ways I can't describe...but...." She broke off - unable to say more.

"And yet you loved him?" He said.

Maybe she still did.

"I don't love." She said, hurriedly, looking down at the unconscious H.I.V.E. man.

Felicity froze when that callused hand cupped her face. He came so close and had his head ducked so that he could peer into her face. Her breath was stuck in her throat and her eyes snapped to his. Mr. Queen looked at her with an intensity that she recognized from Oliver's eyes - _her_ Oliver's eyes.

"Ah, but, Mrs. Palmer." He said, softly. "I disagree."

"It's not a big deal." She said. "Oliver knew it when he married me. I'm incapable of it." She was transfixed by the look in his eyes.

"Felicity." He said, his voice so tender she wanted to cry. "There's one thing I'm certain of about you, now, no matter what universe or dimension you're from - the one thing you do _is_ love."

Uncertain of how to handle his opinion, Felicity swallowed a lump in her throat. The gentle look on his face, faded and he stepped back, dropping his hand. She watched him stretch out the palm he had touched her face with and twitch his fingers by his thigh.

"So what now?" He asked, in an even voice.

She smiled - and it seemed so foreign to her to smile - but she did, nonetheless. "Now, Mr. Queen," She said. "We try and get you home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some info in this chapter. Some action in the next. If you like it tell me, if you hate it tell me, if you want more tell me.  
> Who knows I might post another quick one soon.


	7. Earth One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU all for your REVIEWS. YOU MAKE ME WANT TO WRITE MORE FIC! I read them all and am grateful.
> 
> A boring interlude...  
> ...because 4x10 is coming.

No one is sure how, but it seemed the logical choice for the team to follow Felicity's lead on how to deal with the smart, weird scientist Oliver doppleganger.

They'd taken turns at watching the surveillance on him.

Felicity had provided him with secure space in the Palmer building. There were enough hardware and trinkets for him to tinker with for whatever he was up to, but that wasn't the reason she'd provided him with an impromptu lab. She'd rigged the room with enough cameras to pick up a fly. She even had the bathroom covered, despite Diggle's and Thea's protests. The computer she provided him with was deliberately infected with a Trojan so she could watch everything he searched and access every program he wrote. 

"Are you sure about this?" Diggle said to her. "I mean, it would be easier to keep an eye on him in the..."

Felicity cut him off. "Diggle, that man is not coming anywhere near the Lair."

"But everything he says makes sense, doesn't it?" Laurel said.

Over the past two weeks if Felicity was sure of anything it was that _this_ Oliver knew his way around technology.  

"Yes - which is why it means if anyone as the technical expertise to sabotage the Lair, it's him." She said, vehemently.

"Y'know, I never thought I'd see the day." Diggle remarked.

"This man isn't Oliver. Not ours, anyway." She said.

"I get it, Felicity." Diggle said, patting her shoulder. "He's different, and I'm not saying we trust him blindly...but it's not that uncommon for smart people to be a little off."

Maybe he was being humorous, taking a small jibe at her smartness to ease her mood.

It didn't work.

"Did you see the way he looked at Thea?" Felicity hissed. "He wouldn't even meet her eyes. It was like he didn't even want to look at her!"

Thea gave Felicity a wary look in response.

She looked at Thea. "I'm not saying you can't look after yourself, Thea...all I'm saying is, I don't trust him."

She opened her mouth to protest but Laurel spoke first. "Is that why you're not letting her anywhere near him?"

John and her had briefed Laurel and Thea about the man. But, that didn't stop Thea's all but natural instinct to rush to embrace her brother's doppleganger. Thea's hopefulness may have stemmed from her love and longing for the brother she knew and Felicity understood that but...

...but, Felicity was the only one who saw him stiffen and clench his hands by his sides while she hugged him. She was the only who saw him grit his teeth.

 _"So, you and he, are close in this universe? Odd."_ was all he said and then proceeded to yap about wormhole dynamics.)

"So he's a geeky Oliver." Thea had said, cheerfully. "I had this nerd in my chem class who was a lot like him. Apparently, he was so crazy-smart that he went crazy around other people - they called it Asparagus syndrome or something."

"It's not _Asperger's_." Felicity had said, shaking her head.

Laurel's phone buzzed and she excused herself to take the call.

"When Ollie first came back from the island, he was disconnected, Felicity." Thea said, in a softer voice, so Laurel wouldn't hear.

"Thea, I understand- "

"No you don't." She whispered, forcefully. She leaned forward. "He's always had a connection with you. Like from the start! Even when you guys weren't together or when you were fighting  - it was like obvious you two had some sort of mind-melding going on. You wouldn't know it...but he was closed off -  from those of us who knew him, before."

Diggle shrugged his eyebrows, as if her theory made sense.

"You are the most important person in Oliver's life." Felicity whispered back. "This man behaves like he can't stand your presence."

"I'm not saying he behaved _exactly_ like this, but - like you say - he's a smarter version of Ollie - so maybe this is his way of being closed off."

"Thea," Felicity sighed. "I've never tried to impose rules or boundaries on you..."

" _Which i_ s the only reason, I'm doing as you say and staying away from him." Thea said, straightening up. "I trust your instinct, Felicity - but it's only for so long, okay?"

Felicity nodded and looked expectantly as Laurel who came back with a small smile on her face. "That was Sara - she's in town. She wants to help."

"Good." Felicity said. "Let me see what he's up to.

 

*

"You don't trust me, Miss Smoak."

Felicity looked up from her work at eyes that were so uncannily familiar yet so different. "So far, you've done little to earn my trust, Dr. Queen," She said. 

(Calling him Dr. Queen was easy, even if his Ph.D's were stripped in his dimension - it helped Felicity dissociate his face from who he was.)

He smirked at her and went back to fiddling at a circuit board under the magnifying glass.

"I mean," Felicity began to count on her fingers. "What do we know about you really? You haven't told us how you ended up here - because that's a story for another day. You haven't told us why you were missing in your dimension for eight years - because that's a story for another day. You haven't even told me what exactly you're planning to do with that stablizer because..." She widened her eyes mockingly. "Shocker. That's another story for another day?"

He started to chuckle, shaking his head.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing." He sighed.

"Okay, then."

"I was on an island." He said, after a small while. She looked up at him again.

"It was in China, very much like the one your Oliver was stranded on." He said. When she frowned, he added. "It was mentioned on Wikpedia."

Felicity accepted that. "Go on." She said.

"There was an accident involving my boat. I don't remember much but an associate organization of mine had me rescued. They kept me there for a while until I recovered. At least, I thought they were my friends..."

"What happened?"

"I was in a coma for several months. When I awoke - they offered me a position at the same facility. They showed me all the evidence that indicated to the outside world that I was dead. I was actually grateful for it. The Dean of Starling wasn't the only person I'd pissed off. Being dead, would mean a fresh start. The people who wanted me dead, would leave it alone."

"Who wanted you dead?

"The Russian Mob, the Chinese Mafia - some private less-than-legal organizations...some _family_ members."

"They all wanted you dead?"

"For good reason." He said. "I wasn't exactly an upstanding citizen. I think...I did some less than honorable things."

His admission surprised her. "And you have no problem saying that?" She said.

"No." He said, calmly and starting working on his device. "I was always a man with no scruples. I wanted to conquer the world. Punish those who offended me. I dedicated my entire life before the island to making money and using science for the same. I'd never say I was a good man, ever."

"You're saying that as being a not-good man is like some sort of option, in real life?" Felicity said. "I mean, hello laws? Society?" She dropped her voice and looked away. "Conscience." She muttered.

"Never cared. Still don't." He shrugged.

Felicity didn't say anything since she didn't know exactly how to respond to that. If she hadn't stayed silent she wouldn't have heard him whisper. "But - it all comes at a price. I didn't know until...it was too late." His voice was edgy.

"So, what happened?" Felicity said, wondering whether to pry about what he meant.

"I met a scientist there, Dr. Anthony Ivo. He - he became a friend to me. A guide of sorts. We began to work together. Working on science, for the sake of science helped me."

"Helped you, how?"

"When I was a kid, I loved science for its sheer enterprise. You're a scientist - you know what it's like to have passion, don't you Miss Smoak?"

Felicity nodded, without meaning to.

"After I started my company," He said, "I lost my way - to speak. It became about the money - the power. Those years at the Island, I reconnected with my passion. Dr. Ivo was working to modify some old Japanese strength serum into something good. He was about altruism. His philosophies seemed stupid to me at first, but they grew on me."

"So you, had a change of heart?"

"I don't know about that. There was only thing I carried with me, though."

"Which was?"

"I had disappointed the one person I cared about the most in my life. I had to make it right."

"Sounds like a change of heart to me."

He snorted. "I don't know about that."

"So - how'd you get here?"

"Oh." He pursed his lips. "After five years - at some point Dr. Ivo began to suspect the organization we worked for - my friends -  had rather nefarious plans. One night I found him dead in his room - apparent suicide, but I knew it was staged."

"I'm sorry."

"I escaped. Hid around in Asia for a bit, until the particle accelerator exploded in Central City, creating the metahumans. I found a man who would hide me in different dimesnions should H.I.V.E. ever come close to finding me."

"You worked for H.I.V.E.?" She exclaimed.

"You know about H.I.V.E.?" He looked surprised - genuinely.

"Barely. They're not the good guys here."

"They're not the good guys anywhere." He said. "H.I.V.E. stands for Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination. Their entire purpose is destruction of society and control. They span across the entire multiverse."

"Seriously?" Felicity said, awed by the information. "So the space-bender took you..."

"Not the space bender you were seeking." He interrupted. "Whose name is McNare by the way - he works for H.I.V.E.  I knew another one, a good fellow - not too smart in the head. In one world, I died out at sea while my father survived to become the Hood. I chose to hide there. They were quite scientifically advanced. I needed some time and equipment to finish my work."

"What work?"

He tilted his head at her and smiled. "I have to right my wrongs."

Felicity pursed her lips. "So what happened?" She asked. "Why are you here and not in - wherever you liked to hide."

"H.I.V.E. found my space-bender while I was jumping dimensions looking for certain items. They killed him. I've been stranded here."

"So, you were hiding all over the multiverse?" She said, frowning. "Do you know who Zoom is?"

"I know _of_ him - yes. But I've never met him. Don't want to."

"Why?"

"I don't like equations that can't be solved. Zoom is one of them."

Felicity sighed and closed her eyes, leaning back. "So - that's what you wanted the stabilizer for."

He looked at her quizzically.

"You're planning to widen an existing breech and get through. You're going to use the Palmer satellite as a pulley." She pointed to the blue prints. "That means there's an exact mirror image of the Palmer satellite in whatever universe you are planning to hop into.  How do you plan to account for mass-energy loss? Space benders must have the ability to conserve mass-energy. I presume you're a regular human so you're a bit short on that department."

There was a mysterious smile on his lips.

"What?"

"You're quite smart."

"You didn't answer my question."

"I have an idea." He said. "I might need the assistance of your speedster friend."

He chuckles again, shaking his head.

"Seriously, why do you keep doing that?" She snapped. "What is so funny?"

"You - " He glances up. "I guess I have to get used to your voice."

"Am I too loud for your taste?" Felicity said, gritting her teeth.

"Far from it." He said, smiling up at her. "I find your loquaciousness extremely entertaining."

She wondered if her Oliver knew the meaning of the word 'loquacious'.

"My Felicity." He said. "She rarely talks. She's intelligent, but she's more of a strategist than a scientist."

"Hmm. I'll bet she chose to be cocktail waitress in Vegas." Felicity muttered looking through the schematics of his work.

She looked up when he didn't respond. He was looking at her curiously.

"Why would you say that?" He said.

"What?"

"About being a cocktail waitress. What - what did your mother do, here?"

Felicity frowned.

"Felicity - my Felicity - she always told me that if she never ended up in foster care that would have been her fate. Her mother was a cocktail waitress, apparently." He said, when she stayed quiet.

"Foster care?" Felicity echoed.

"Felicity was born in Vegas." He said, slowly. "Were you?"

Felicity found herself nodding.

"Felicity's father..." He spoke in guarded tones. "He took off when she was very young."

Felicity blinked.

"Her mother turned her into foster care."

A world where Donna Smoak had chosen to abandon her, Felicity was intrigued. What would _her_ life had turned out to be had that happened to her?

"Where's her mother now?" Felicity said.

"They're estranged...so I'm not sure. Felicity emotionally disassociated from her parents a long time back. I always believed that was the reason why she was so...." He broke off.

"So?" She prompted.

"Cold." He said, meeting her eyes.

Felicity frowned. There was such a strange look in his eyes.

"You sound like you were close." She said, expecting a reponse.

"Oh, we were married." He said, like it was the most common thing in the world.

"What?"

He smiled.

"You - you two were...what?"

"Oh, do you want to hear the fun part?" He said, his smile widening but not quite reaching his eyes.

"There's a fun part?"

He nodded and lifted up the grey pullover she'd loaned him. His body was lean, but his muscles weren't quite defined as her Oliver's. She saw a large trifoliate incision on his abdomen and a smaller angrly bullet shaped scar right under his rib cage.

Her eyes met his. He returned her glance with a sardonic smile and spoke. "She tried to kill me.

 

*

"He's lying." Diggle said. "There's no way any version of you would hurt a fly."

"He also said that H.I.V.E. contracted him to build a biological weapon that went horribly wrong." Felicity said, "and he's jumping dimensions looking for raw materials to counteract it.  But I can't be sure if he's being truthful or not." Felicity sighed after she appraised them and leaned her head back in frustration. "Meanwhile, Oliver! My Oliver - I don't even know where he is! _Argh!_ "

"Technically." Barry said to Felicity, pouting as he considered it. "In another universe, you could totally be a badass."

"Technically." Cisco said, "He's a cocky pain in the ass with his cryptic wierdo-ness. So maybe he deserved it." When they all look at him, he straightens his face. "I'm not saying I'd go to the extremes of killing him but...I'm just saying, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to." He looked at Felicity. "Women have killed their husbands for less...you know."

Felicity gave him angry-face until his face shrivelled into sheepishness.

"Once he activates his device over the supposed breech, what  he needs is for me to run in a spiral up until it stays fixed." Barry said, changing the topic. "That way we maintain the gravimetric field for your transit. Dig, you and Felicity accompany Dr. Queen has to scan all the sub-breeches through the portal and identify the one he can scan Oliver's DNA in. Thea, Laurel and Sara  stay on both sides of the sub-singular portal and make sure he doesn't pull any fast ones. Cisco anchors us back by shutting down the satellite in case anything goes wrong."

"All in all we hoping that we don't open up a singularity in the middle of Star City and swallow the entire world up." Felicity muttered. "Because that would suck."

"You guys realize," Thea said, as she checked her arrows. "That we..." She pointed to the Canaries and herself. "Don't understand a word of what you just said."

"If a black hole opens up in Star..." Cisco began to explain but Thea just waved him off making a face.

"We'll find him, Felicity." Diggle said, squeezing her shoulder. "This will work."

"I'll be really pissed if we don't." Felicity said, zipping up her backpack. "Come on, it's time."

 

*

 

The breech which once looked like an otherwise ugly amoebic blob opened out like blossoming flower the influence of the massive thingamabob that this Oliver Queen built.

Felicity, Cisco and Barry stood amazed at the sight.

"It's holding!" Cisco yelled, surveying the readings.

"Good luck." She whispered to Barry. "Don't die!"

He winked at her and jumped in.

"The entire operation rests on the premise that that piece of metal won't malfunction or just fall out of the sky!" Diggle yelled at her as terrible gale blew - the energy field that Barry generated as he ran.

Felicity glanced up at the dot in the sky where she presumed the Palmer Satellite would be.

"Well, defunct satellites wouldn't fall out of the sky." Felicity said, squinting under the force pushing her back. "They'd circulate in orbit and not do anything." She shook her head, looking at the red line zipping about in circles within the breech with worry.

Barry's life was at a great risk here, too.

"Not really relevant, right now!" She said.

 _"You guys should really see this."_ They could hear Barry over the comms.

"Comms holding too!" Cisco jumped, excitedly. "Do you guys realize how amazing this is! This is like beyond Nobel worthy stuff here! This is bigger than relativity!"

Oliver Queen, three Ph.Ds-stripped who had been pensively checking things on his tablet, suddenly looked up at her.

Given that there was cathartic energy field sweeping around them, his intense gaze took her breath away.

Her heart fluttered. For an instant, Felicity forgot that this was a doppelganger, for an instant she saw _her_ Oliver in him.  

"Are you ready?" He said to her, holding his hand out to her.

She nodded and grabbed Diggle's hand before she caught his.

It felt like falling - when they stepped in. Her stomach leapt and this peculiar feeling vibrated through her entire core. And, then it suddenly felt like being inside an empty room. She shook away the dizziness and looked up.

A flurry of fractals burst all around her, intermittently rippled by that familiar red streak going in spirals. Felicity had never seen anything so beautiful in her entire life (and she had been looking at _her_ Oliver's naked body every day - so that was saying a lot).

"I'm standing inside a white-hole." She whispered out loud. "I'm actually standing still inside a transuniverse portal."

 _"Feels amazing, doesn't it?"_ She heard Barry say through the comm.

 _"I totally hate you guys!"_ She heard Cisco whine.

"We're at the centre of a honeycomb." Oliver (three-phD's-stripped) Queen spoke. His voice washed over her and made her tremble much like her Oliver's voice did. Dr. Queen pointed towards something. Following his gaze, she saw multiple tubes of the similar fractals opening out - like tunnels.

"Each tunnel leads to a different mirror universe."

Oliver Queen's body seemed to have blurry edges when she spotted him. Even though they were technically a few centimeters apart, inside the hole it felt like miles.

Cisco's theory was right. Space really got twisted up in here.

She turned and... "No sudden movements!" She heard Dr. Queen yell. "Newton's third law, remember?"

"Okay." She said, turning as slowly as she could. "John!" She shouted. "Are you okay?"

"I feel like I'm stuck in one of Sara's kaleidoscopes in the middle of fourth of July fireworks." She heard his voice reverberate throughout.

"Okay! But don't move until I say so."

"What?" She heard Diggle say. "Why?"

"Every minute action of yours is like a massive stone being thrown in a lake." She explained. "The entirety of the multiverse is the lake and there'll be a ripple effect that can cause this whole tube to break down. Equal and opposite reaction, okay?"

"I don't understand jack shit of that."

She wanted to laugh, but it wasn't the time.

"Ah fuck!" She heard Dr. Queen exclaim. His voice seemed to echo a million times over.  

"What's wrong Dr. Queen?" She said.

"It would appear that _your_ Oliver is in my universe. The one I was born in."

"He's alive!" She cried out. "Did you hear that John? That's a good thing, right, Dr. Queen? We know where he is."

Something heavy snaked around her neck. Felicity couldn't see much but she felt someone grab her. An unbearable pain tore through her body, like her skin was being taken through a thousand shredders.

Something was wrong. She felt like she was trapped in a dream and couldn't wake up.

Diggle seemed to be yelling from miles away. She saw Sara, Laurel and Thea break in all around her. It was like she was stuck in a room of mirrors and there were so many reflections she couldn't see who was real.

" _Felicity_!" Barry's voice tore through her ear so loudly her eardrums almost burst.

And suddenly a voice was in her ear. It sounded like Oliver's voice but without the kindness. Without the tender undertone that was so essentially the man she loved.

"I am sorry, Miss Smoak." He said, not particularly sounding remorseful. "But this complicates things."

Felicity screamed as her body felt like it had burst into a thousand burning sparks of pain and her world went black.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also all the wormhole physics is utter nonsense.   
> If I knew that stuff I wouldn't be writing fanfic now would I?


	8. Earth X....Earth One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So been a while writing an action scene - so this might a little :yawn:

A universe of improbables - this Earth was.

If asked, given his experiences, Oliver would say he had a pretty high tolerance for all sorts of unimaginables. He had witnessed a great many things in his life ranging from the unnatural to the supernatural.

Felicity (even if not _his_ Felicity) being friends with Slade Wilson...

...improbable, unimaginable (But then again, who was he to comment on this universe?).

 

The Hood and she conversed in huddled whispers at a proximity that made Oliver restless.

Was it was out of habit that he felt this way? He wondered. This _was_ the face of a man who killed his mother, on his earth. This was the face of a man who would go to any length to destroy him out of vengeance.

The last time he saw Felicity with Slade, she had the blade of his sword at her neck, mortal fear on her face and tears in her eyes. The last time Oliver saw Felicity with Slade, he felt the apprehension of the inevitable and guilt of the danger he had deliberately exposed her to. The last time Oliver saw Slade alone, his former mentor was behind bars, mentioning Felicity's name as a taunt, tapping into Oliver's fear of losing her and it evoked an anger enough to make Oliver resolve that he would keep her as far away as possible, from Slade in the future.

So maybe it was the ebbing tension of his fear for her life.  

Or.

Maybe seeing the small smile on her face when she dipped her chin chuckling softly, matching the guffaw that errupted from Wilson that disturbed him. Her stance was relaxed and completely unlike the otherwise cautious Felicity Palmer. The familiarity between them was unnerving.

He didn't like it one bit.

(Also - he began to see her as 'Felicity' in a way. Not Mrs. Palmer. Which made him feel protective of her and...made him want to keep looking at her.

Oliver was grateful that he might be going home soon, because this confused him - a lot.)

When she gestured to Oliver to come towards them, he approached Slade with caution, expecting what he always expected.

Blame, derision and vengeance flaming through Slade Wilson's one good eye.

When the larger man removed the hood, Oliver saw that both fairly intact grey eyes held nothing more than wariness and unfamiliarity. Slade gazed up and down scanning his shift, his eyes resting on Oliver's bow and weaponry before meeting his eyes. "Mr. Queen." He said, nodding.

Oliver nodded back.

"You're sure, it's not him." Slade said, glancing at Mrs. Palmer. "He looks just like your Oliver."

His thick accented voice evoked a tremor of apprehension in Oliver, which he forcefully kept under control. _This isn't the Slade you know,_ he told himself.

Mrs. Palmer shrugged her eyebrows. He was beginning to grasp the meaning of that facial gesture now. It was as though she was acknowledging a stated fact that she couldn't do anything about, so she might as well live with it.  It seemed characteristic to her personality in this universe.  

"Your counterpart's little chimera virus nearly killed my wife." Slade grumbled. "You should know, that if I find your face repulsive, it's not personal."

"Noted." Oliver said.

(He wondered if Shado was Slade's wife in this universe. The idea of her being alive - it somehow eased the tension in his body.)

"So," Oliver said, looking at Felicity Palmer, who seemed like she was fighting off a smile. It reminded him of a mischievous look that his Felicity got whenever she proved him wrong about something and didn't want to make a thing out of it. He wondered what she was so amused about. "What's the plan?" He said, trying to hide the nervousness he felt, with a perky tone.

Slade reached for something in his side-pocket and handed to him. It was a satellite photograph of a man looking up at a sky with a massive dish antenna in the background. It was...

"That's - that's Ray Palmer." Oliver said. He looked up at Felicity.

"Yes. This shiela here has the most astounding taste in men." Slade said, jerking his head towards Felicity, a lighthearted jibe oozing from his voice. She didn't quite meet eyes with either of them. "It would appear that calculating, evil-doers are her type of man." Slade said, scowling at her. "Sometimes, I wonder if she does it deliberately."

She didn't seem insulted. In fact, she kept a cold, unemotional face...but Oliver felt oddly defensive and felt inclined to -

\- Wait. What?

Oliver's head snapped towards Felicity. She stood there with a cold, deadpan expression.

"Mr. Palmer is the current face of H.I.V.E." Slade said, sensing Oliver's confusion. "I have solid intelligence, that he took over shortly after Damien Dahrk was killed. I am convinced..." He looked at Felicity Palmer. "...that his motivation to woo Mrs. Palmer here - was to throw her off his scent."

"Wha-what? What scent?" Oliver frowned. "I know Ray - he _doesn't_ have a dark side. He'd never be a part of H.I.V.E."

Slade exchanged looks with Mrs. Palmer. Slade looked back at Oliver and shrugged. "Maybe not in your universe."

Felicity Palmer's face was completely devoid of emotion. Oliver wondered what she was feeling.

"In any case," Slade said. "He's a threat. We can't locate him, now, but we believe he's interested in locating you."

"Me? Why?"

"We believe he thinks you're Dr. Queen. The Oliver from this world."

"But Oliver from this world is dead." Oliver said.

Slade exchanged a mysterious look with Felicity. She shook her head at him, so subtly, that if Oliver didn't have his eyes on her, he would have missed it.

"Be that as it may." Slade's thick accent became more apparent as he spoke slower. "We feel it is in your best interest to go back to your universe. If Palmer realizes you are not in fact Dr. Queen, he'll have you executed at once. One of our scientists has been able to dissect the portal into what we believe is your universe or dimension, or whatever they call it. It's all a load of dickshit that I can't give a rat's arse about. All I've understood is that it's not an exact science. You must be prepared, Mr. Queen for the possibility of ending up in another world and potentially stranded there."

Oliver floundered, thinking over everything that Slade had said. His knowledge of multi-verse travel was limited to whatever he'd understood from Barry's and his Felicity's explanation of what was going on in Central City. In all the desperation, he felt for getting home, he had forgotten that there was an Earth 'Two' along with their Earth 'One' as Barry & Cisco had explained it. And here he was on a world that was neither. How many Earths were there? Who knew, which Earth he was stuck on?

He never once considered he might get lost along the way.

"The question is, Mr. Queen." Slade said, with a long sigh. "Is it a risk worth taking?"

"Stay here, maybe get caught and die, jump universes, get lost and maybe die." Oliver said, with a shrug. "Are there other alternatives?"

"None, I'm afraid." Slade said.

"What do you think?" He turned towards Felicity, without thinking.

Her body stiffened, her eyes flashed with confusion. "Why would that matter?" She asked.

It hit Oliver that this wasn't his Felicity. His habitual tendency to turn towards her for input was completely lost on the brown-haired stoic creature who looked like her.

He had to see _his_ girl again.

There was no choice to make.

He exhaled out a long sigh. "Let's do this." He mumbled.

"Right - so we take you to Queen-Palmer Labs here. Our scientist has already started working on the portal." He sighed and then handed Oliver a pair of keys, jabbing his thumb in the direction of a fairly sized superbike that resembled his own back on his Earth but seemed retrofitted. A larger motorcycle that Oliver was certain was Slade's vehicle stood beside it.

"I hope you know how to ride a motorcycle, Mr. Queen." Slade said as Mrs. Palmer gestured for him to head towards the smaller bike. "Good luck."

As the bike came to life under him, Oliver felt the gentle movement of Felicity  Palmer straddling the pillion seat. He looked at her reflection in side mirror, watched her shaking off some stray bangs of her wavy hair.

His Felicity had never ridden on the bike with him. She never asked, and he being the colossal dick that he was (he realized, just then) never asked her. Oliver recalled how she liked to run her hand over the bike, whenever they were conversing around it, as though she were caressing it. He was always so consumed with his missions, that it never struck him that she'd be thrilled to have a ride. He swore to himself, right then, that if he ever got back to his Earth, he would take her out for a ride, maybe in the moonlight - or whenever she would prefer. 

The thought brought small smile to his face.

He tested the accelerator, watching Slade's reflection appear in the mirror. He tensed, as he habitually did, just as Slade reached a hand out catching Felicity's elbow.

"Oi!" He barked, in a commanding voice. "You! Be careful."

He saw her face soften in the mirror, a smile widening at her face and something akin to affection emanating from her. "You too." She said, and donned the helmet.

Oliver met her eyes in the mirror just as she snapped the black visor shut.

For some reason he was seized with the inexplicable urge to punch Slade in the balls, but he refrained, seeing as it would probably not go well with his girlfriend's doppleganger.

 

 

"So, Slade's married!" He said into the comm she'd provided him with.

(It seemed as good a place as any to have a conversation...here, over the roar of the motorcycle...zipping across Star City.)

" _So_?" He heard her say.

"He loved a girl named Shado in my world." He said.

" _He loves her, here, too - I suppose._ " She said. _"She's his wife."_

So Shado was alive. That was a relief to know.

"How'd you meet him?"

Nothing.

He smiled at the reflection. All he saw was a black helmet with an opaque visor, but he got the sense she was smiling.

"So are you like his sidekick or something?" He asked

Nothing.

"Does he at least have others, for backup?" He prompted

 _"Why would he need back up?"_ She finally said. _"He has me."_

Oliver grinned.

" _Mrs. Palmer_. _Mr. Wilson._ " Oliver heard a familiar voice coming through. _"This is Leonard."_

 _"Copy, Dr. Snart."_ She said. _"Go ahead."_

_"The portal expansion is almost complete for package delivery."_

_"Acknowledged."_ She said.

 _"It appears."_ Leonard Snart's trademark sarcasm came through. _"We have company, though."_

 _"Explain."_ She ordered.

A louder vroom cut across him. Oliver watched Slade zoom his bike ahead of them. Oliver followed his tail across the isolated road. Oliver felt that the layout closely resembled the Star Labs he had seen on his Earth. From what he understood, they were headed in the direction of the antenna farm.

 _"Mrs. Palmer."_ Oliver heard Wilson say. " _We have a bird problem."_

 _"Black or white?"_ Her voice replied.

_"White."_

_"Copy that."_ She responded.

"What's up?" Oliver asked

 _"Sara Lance."_ She answered.

 

Oliver curved the bike, screeching to a halt. They were outnumbered. 

Sara Lance was there, all right. She was surrounded by an army of H.I.V.E. soliders.

 

 

*

 

If the idea of Slade Wilson being Felicity's friend pushed that boundary line on batshit crazy universes, the sight of Felicity killing without a single flinching expression on her face completely obliterated it.

Oliver had known, loved and admired a fair number of women warriors in his life. All brilliant fighters. All supremely skilled.

As a smaller fighter, the Sara on his world, tackled with precision and always used her opponents strength against them - but there was still an element of brute force in her fighting that came from her training with the League and was only fueled by her bloodlust after the pit.

The Sara of this world, seemed like a wild animal who relied on indiscriminate bloodshed.

But nothing like Felicity Palmer.

In the past weeks, he'd only seen glimpses of her prowess. He had assumed it to be a by-product of circumstances; maybe like the Sara of his world, she too had been trained for survival.

Obviously not.

Felicity Palmer didn't fight. She fucking danced.

She moved with softness of a cat and attacked with the ferocity and speed of a cobra. Her evasive tactics were fluid; her kicks and punches were as clear-cut as her gunfire. Her eyes were expressionless and focused. Her ducks and flips seemed effortless. She rarely grunted - in fact she wasn't even breathing hard.

Somehow, Oliver got the same impression as when he watched Felicity Smoak work. The fluidity with which her fingers ran over a keyboard, or when she sorted through wires like they were shoe laces or the look on her beautiful face as she ran equations in her brain or the way her shiny eyes went still when she planned.

It was strategic, intelligent and exquisite.

It wasn't random sparring, Felicity Palmer's style. It was a fucking massacre.

A beautiful massacre that he couldn't take his eyes off.

Like she'd been doing this all her life. Like she was born for this.

Oliver felt the heat of a bullet zipping past his ear and his opponent sinking to the ground. He stopped counting the number of times he looked back at her with incredulity.

Her face was glistening with sweat. It gave her complexion a rather appealing warmth. She was panting, but only so slightly.

"What?" She growled.

Oliver was taken aback by her fierceness. (Also - maybe - a little turned on.)

"What?" He returned as he tackled a H.I.V.E Ghost.

"Why do you keep doing that every time?"

"Doing what?"

"You keep looking at me like I kicked your dog or something!" She snarled. She swung around on one foot and slammed the other into an oncoming assailant.

If he had the time he'd have noticed she was more verbose. "You killed him!" Oliver pointed to the guy lying dead next to his feet.

"Huh?" She interjected. Her eyebrows crinkled and her nose went up.

It must have been the exertion from the fighting that had her emotional defenses down, because she looked exactly like his Felicity when she made that face.

"You killed him!" Oliver repeated, grabbing another guy by his collar just as he  dashed towards Felicity and throwing him off before he got a chance.

 _Bang!_ He ducked instinctively and realized she'd done it again. He looked back at the bloody hole in the face of a H.I.V.E. soldier.

"I killed him too!" She said. "So what?"

Felicity hated violence. Felicity hated bloodshed. Felicity was the reason he stopped murdering people.

Not this Felicity though. _Her_ cheeks were flushed and _her_ eyes were shining.

It was as though she thrived on the violence.

The cold, heartless, impassive creature roaring to life - like a beast awakened.

"My Felicity doesn't kill." He said, sounding grumpy. 

"Huh?" She said, running towards him and then dropping to a skid as she took out another soldier by tripping him.

Oliver marvelled at the way she rose up in the same sweep like it was all one coordinated graceful dance move.

Her mouth was open and her dimples shone wide as she grinned. There was a teasing look in her eyes. That beautiful Felicity Smoak smile - it took his breath away.

"What does your Felicity do on your team anyway?" She said, huffing as she ducked when someone else came at her. Her voice was unguarded, sounding more like his Felicity than the cold, controlled woman he'd been seeing these past weeks. "Just tech stuff?"

Oliver realized it only when he said it, smiling to himself. "So - so much more."

 

Felicity didn't have much regard for archery. She, more than once, rolled her eyes when Slade would go off on his lectures, heralding it as the perfect melding of man and mechanics. She found it a clumsy, limiting mode of offence. Too much muscle power wastage. Arrows were no substitutes for bullets.

But Oliver Queen fought like a machine, it was so similar to Slade's yet unlike anything she'd seen. His form when he drew his bow and released the arrows; the split-second choices of specialized arrows, the way he tackled his opponents; his focussed gaze and his target accuracy. All coupled with a meticulous mind like a calm predator

It was enticing, to say in the least.

And Felicity wished she had more time to admire him, but apparently the craziest Canary of them all wasn't about to let that happen.

She found Sara to be as insufferable as she was spiteful; a master manipulator, pain in the ass and a complete waste of her time. Felicity despised the Lance sisters with a vengeance because Oliver  - _her_ Oliver - had a history with both of them. But, Sara she loathed more than Laurel. Sara was a taker. Even after their wedding. Sara was constantly trying to seduce him.

"I think Oliver likes to screw corpses." She taunted Felicity as she disconnected her steel-staff into two parts. "A dead woman is what you are, Mrs. _Palmer_."

"Does your sister know you screwed her boyfriend?" Felicity retorted.

"So," She shrugged. "He has taste."

"And yet..." Felicity sighed mockingly. "I had the ring."

Sara screeched like a banshee and charged at Felicity.

 

 _"Mrs. Palmer."_  Leonard Snart's voice piped over the comm. _"We are at all full power. The portal is wide open and chances of the package being delivered to the dimension of choice is high. I suggest you push him towards it."_

Felicity felt the muscle exhaustion setting in several minutes later. It took her a few minutes to understand that Sara was pushing her away from the rest of the fighting.

"Understood." Felicity said, inhaling sharply as she ran towards a wall, while Sara chased her down. She leveraged herself off the wall, somersaulting into the air, reaching for her baton, slapping it out mid-air. She slammed it into Sara's calves as she landed behind her.

A wild scream, flurry of abuses accompanied Sara sinking to her knees.

"Complete waste of time." Felicity muttered, shaking her head and dashed off to find Oliver Queen.

He was cornered by a group of H.I.V.E. Ghosts. "Oliver!" She screamed at him. She jumped into the air as a soldier came at her. She slammed her foot into his face, gaining leverage, aiming her semi-automatic at them and literally landed on her feet, firing the entire magazine as she descended.

He had a look of stunned admiration on his face. Felicity didn't know why, but she felt flattered.

"Come on!" She yelled and began to run. She reloaded her pistol as she ran, relieved to hear his footfall behind her. 

She skidded to a halt when she saw it.

It was...so different.

"What the...!" He gasped behind her, gaping at the luminescence.

Felicity snapped out of the trance. "Dr. Snart!" She clapped her hand on the comm. "I'm at the portal! What now?"

" _Just dive through!_ " He said. " _Hurry, Mrs. Palmer! More Ghosts on your tail!"_

"Hood!" She shouted. "I need cover!"

 _"I'm on it."_ She heard Slade's voice in the comm. _"White Canary is out of sight!"_

She whirled around frantically, and almost breathed out the sigh of relief when she saw that Sara Lance wasn't anywhere near.

"You have to go now!" She said, catching Oliver Queen's arm.

He looked hesitant.

"It's now or never, Oliver!" She shoved him forward towards the spiral glow.

"Felicity." He said, shaking his head, turning to her. He caught her shoulders and forced her to look at him.

Her adrenaline charged heart slowed down when did. He was looking at her with so much emotion that she forgot her circumstances.

"I - I..." He started to say. 

She felt numb, instantly. Whatever was raging within her from the fight, instantly shut down. Her shoulders drooped and she looked away.

"I've never been good at goodbyes, Mr. Queen." She said, her voice quivering. "Please go now."

Gloved hands cupped her face, a thumb forced her chin up. His eyes reflected the overwhelming feelings that bubbled within her.

"Thank you." Oliver Queen from whatever-world-he-was-from whispered, looking into her eyes.

_I love you, Felicity. Her Oliver would say so often. Ever so often, she believed him._

Felicity heard a zooming noise, just as he spoke.  Their heads  jerked towards the sound, simultaneously.

" _Semper fi_  bitch!" Sara's shrieking voice came over the roar of the motorcycle. The White Canary charged it forwards, catapulting the bike in the air.

Without thinking, Felicity flung herself at Oliver, protectively - trying to get him out of the way. Sinewy arms came around her. His body enveloped her. Felicity's face connected with the underside of his neck.

(It was like being in _her_ Oliver's arms. When they made love, his arms would wrap around her, she would bury her face into the crook of his neck, her fingers would splay over her back. She would feel safe, even though she didn't need it. She would feel _loved_.

Even if he had never meant it - she loved it when he embraced her.)

A cataclysmic burst of colors shone all around her. The ground beneath her feet slipped, she was falling through an abyss filled with light.

But...he was here, she was safe.

Even if he wasn't hers.

She heard Sara's scream booming throughout the bright chasm.

 

*

 

Oliver slammed onto asphalt with pain shooting up his side and her weight over his body.

There was an aggressive thunderclap of a headache that he recognized. It was the same head-splitting feeling that he had when he'd jumped through into Mrs. Palmer's universe, chasing after the spacebender.

A groan alerted his attention. He looked down at her. Her brown hair was tumbled loose in waves over his chest.

"Felicity." He said, placing a hand gently on the crown of her head. He stroked it gently. "Honey - are you okay?"

He moved his chin away just as her head snapped up and eyes narrowed at him. "Did you just call me 'honey'?" She growled.

"No." He lied.

She stared right at him until he gave in. "Yes - but it's just...habit." He said, trying to to smile.

"Stop it, then." She commanded, shoving his hands off her and scrambled up.

"What happened?" He said, holding his head as he lay back flat.

She wobbled a little and looked around. "I er - I don't know." She said.

Oliver craned his neck up. He flipped onto his front and hopped up. He pressed on the comm - it crackled with static loud enough for his head to start throbbing again. He frowned and looked around. They were at the antenna farm -

 _"Dr. Snart, Do you copy?"_ Loud static crackled on his comm in between Felicity Palmer's repeated calls. Oliver pulled the comm off and tucked it in his pocket.

"It looks like the same place." He said.

"It's not." She said. "I know this as Queen-Palmer Science's property."

"Yeah, so?"

She pointed to a large dish antenna which had a sign plastered to its gantry platform. It read: _Star Labs._

He breathed apprehensively.

_Was it possible?_

Oliver heard a faint rumbling sound. It sounded like a motorcycle.

"Dammit!" Felicity muttered.

"What?"

"Run, Mr. Queen." She said.

"What?"

"Run!" She yelled and

A floral blast burst through the air from the direction they had come through. Oliver turned on his heels and ran as he heard the characteristic vroom of a motorcycle. He turned back watching as it cut through the beams of light, flying through the air and landing on the ground.

But that wasn't all.

Multiple dark forms jumped through.

H.I.V.E.'s Ghosts from Felicity Palmer's Earth.

Oliver caught Felicity Palmer's hand and dragged her around the side of large dish antenna to take cover.

"Okay!" He panted. "We need to..." He watched Felicity fish out a Beretta and load it. "Where do you keep so much ammo?" He said, surprised.

" _I_ need to kill that sociopathic disaster!" She muttered, through gritted teeth as she peered in the direction of the motorcycle's sound.

"Felicity Quee-een!" Sara Lance sang loudly. "You're gonna die Felicity Queen!" Sara kept shouting in a sing-song voice which came from different directions indicating that she was moving. "But before you do, I'm gonna, straddle your one-true love and take his cock in my mouth and he's going to like it because you were such a frigid little bitch and not woman enough for him!"

Mrs. Palmer just rolled her eyes, but Oliver was grossed out.

"Did he cheat on you?" Oliver said, making a disgusted face as he checked his quiver for the arrows he had left.

Mrs. Palmer snapped her head at him. "I - Really?" She stuttered. "Is this the time to have that conversation?" She hissed.

Oliver shrugged, making an innocent face.

"Would it matter?" She said, still looking at him in disbelief.

"Yes." He said.

"No." She said, shaking her head and then looking around. "He may have screwed them before we were married but..." She said, in a cool voice. "He - he messed me up in a million different ways, but he never cheated."

"I'm sorry - sorry for everything he did to hurt you." Oliver said, crouching and looking around the other side.

"Why are you sorry?" She whispered, bobbing her head around searching for their enemies.

"I don't know. I just..." He sighed, sadly. "Felicity's the best thing that happened to me." He whispered back. "I hate the idea that I hurt her in any universe."

She looked at him with a gentleness he'd never seen on her face, before. She opened her mouth to say something when a series of repetitive _rat-a-tat's_ went off close to his ear. They ducked as sparks flew off their heads.

Dodging bullets, literally.

"Split up?" He prompted.

"Damn straight." She muttered, crouched into a fetal position and then rolled out of his sight.

Oliver jumped up, setting the jettison arrows off. He ducked from the force of the small explosion but kept running. He rounded off a row of antennae and climbed over the platform of the one at the extreme end, climbing up the gantry to get a better visual.

He spotted Felicity Palmer in a physical brawl with Sara Lance in an open space, at a location midway between from where he had come. From across the sides he saw Ghosts navigate towards the two women. Oliver quickly hopped off and aiming for the dish closest to her, intending to use it to provide her with cover.

He skidded to a halt when an eardrum-piercing but familiar sonic blast forced him to drop to the ground.

Laurel.

His Laurel.

He grabbed his ears waiting for the sound to stop. Oliver rose and continued on to the open space where he saw that Felicity Palmer was no longer to be seen but...

The team was there. Laurel, Thea, John and....

...the Sara he knew.

They had cornered the H.I.V.E. ghosts and were tackling them.

"Green Arrow!" 

Oliver turned to find Cisco standing there, holding a small laptop, gaping at him. "Is...is that you?" Cisco said, looking gobsmacked.

Oliver grinned and winked at him and then jumped into the fight.

He was home.

Finally. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Oliver's home. The end.   
> ...?  
> I wonder where my favorite character is though?


	9. Earth One/Earth X

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big thank you for all the reviews.  
> 

 

_ Earth One _

 

"Ollie!" Thea whispered.

They didn't move. They just stared at him and then at each other standing in a loose circle.

He grinned and scanned them all until...

_He was home. He would see his Felicity again._

"You should tell her." Oliver said. "Felicity, I mean." He pointed to the comm in Cisco's ear. "I lost my comm when I fell through to the other side."

They didn't answer.

"Guys!" He barked. "It's me!"

Diggle stepped forward; in the dim light of the night, Oliver saw what looked like multiple paper cuts on his face. He seemed to be looking over Oliver's shoulder like he was expecting something behind him. Oliver turned back and saw nothing. He frowned when he returned his gaze to Diggle.

He assumed it to be surprise. Maybe they didn't expect of find him this way. Maybe they had something else planned out to rescue him. Or maybe they were planning the take down of Dahrk's Ghosts and he stumbled in.

"John?" Oliver said.

"Ol- Oliver." Diggle's face was completely pale. His eyes were glassy.

"What?"

"It's really you." Diggle's voice was hollow.

"Yeah!" Oliver said, chortling a little, amused at the sight of their faces.

Thea snapped out of her stupor with a sob, she rushed to him, hopping off her feet to embrace him. Oliver stumbled back with her weight and hugged her back, holding her tight until her breathing eased. He reached for the small comm in her ear as he held her. She didn't flinch but kept her hooded head buried in his shoulder. Oliver clipped the device to his ear as Thea slipped back.

"Hi honey! I'm home." He said, expecting to hear some exaggerated vocal reaction from Felicity.

Nothing.

"Felicity?" He tapped the device, glancing at Thea.

And then he looked at Thea's face. He looked at Diggle's face. He looked at Laurel and Sara and then at Cisco. They all mirrored the same expression. As though something had gone terribly wrong.

"Oliver." Laurel started to say - when they heard screaming.

Much like Ghosts he knew from this world, the Ghosts from the other universe also preferred suicide to getting caught. All the H.I.V.E. soldiers he had counted lay dead in various parts of the antenna farm after their vigorous encounter.

Besides, the screaming was too high pitched to be male.

"Sara?" Laurel gasped.

They all exchanged a look with the woman who stood beside them and then at Oliver in amazement when they all recognized the figure running towards them with her long gold hair flapping out.

"Is -Is - Is she from the other place?" Thea stuttered.

"Careful!" Oliver commanded, readying his bow. "She's not exactly..." He trailed off wondering how he was supposed to described her. He looked at the Sara by Laurel's side; all he could come up with was: "...social."

The other Sara skidded to a halt when she saw them, her eyes scanning every member until they stilled on her own counterpart wearing the black mask. Her mouth fell open.

"Sara Lance!" Oliver bellowed. "Surrender yourself. We're not gonna hurt you!"

The other Sara shook her head, turning on her heels. Oliver released a bola arrow - she masterfully dived out of its trajectory and the trap-wires went hurtling somewhere else. He was about to pull another one when a shadow jumped out from nowhere and tackled her.

The Sara - his Sara - who was a few feet behind him, suddenly swung her staff and charged to her counterpart's defence as a fight ensued.

"Sara! No!" Oliver called after his friend and dashed behind her.

"Who is that?" Laurel called as she ran up to catch with him. Oliver heard the footfalls of the rest of the team behind him. Oliver broke his run and exhaled exasperatedly as they came upon a three-way standoff.

And Felicity Palmer stood in the middle with guns aimed at both Saras.

"Woah!" Laurel whispered.

Cisco followed behind, panting heavily, clutching his laptop. "No way." He whispered.

"Is that...?" Thea gasped from beside him.

"No way!" Cisco's voice sounded hollow.

"Felicity?" Diggle exclaimed.

"No. Way!" Cisco's voice trembled with awe.

Felicity Palmer's head snapped towards them. Oliver watched her eyes widen and her mouth drop.

She wasn't looking at him. He turned around, following the direction of her gaze to the two people who stood behind him.

Diggle and Thea.

Oliver rounded about and called to Sara. Both Saras turned their heads towards him in response. He made eye contact with his Sara until she understood. She immediately retracted her weapon and bowed out, defensively stepping back.

Oliver marveled at how Felicity Palmer kept her gun trained on her movements even when her eyes were fixed on Diggle and Thea.

"What the fuck is going on?" The other Sara cried. She looked frantically between Felicity Palmer and them. She made a dirty face and crouched - ready to pounce on Mrs. Palmer. Oliver drew the bow-string just as Felicity Palmer's hand twitched.

A collective gasp sounded as the other Sara's leap in the air was arrested and she flopped down grabbing her injured leg screaming like wounded animal.

And Felicity Palmer didn't break her gaze once;  her expressionless eyes continued to focus on John and Thea.

"Did she just...?" Thea squeaked.

"Yeah." Oliver sighed.

"She didn't even look...she just..." Laurel mumbled.

"No fucking way!" Cisco whistled.

The Sara from her universe moaned and growled, clutching her leg, spewing abuses at Mrs. Palmer.

His Sara flinched at the gunshot and had her staff ready to strike. Felicity Palmer dropped the arm she had trained on the Sara from her world; she broke eye contact with John and Thea for the first time and looked at _his_ Sara with cold eyes. She flicked her wrist twice with the gun aimed at his Sara, wordlessly gesturing her to back-off.

Sara looked at Oliver - confusion and distress written in her eyes. This was not a Felicity she ever expected, perhaps - but then again, no one could never have imagined a Felicity like her. He nodded at her. She retreated.

"Mrs. Palmer?" Oliver called out.

"Mrs. Palmer?" Cisco exclaimed. "Totally awesome!"

Oliver shot a glare at him. Cisco shrunk and grumbled. "What? They were totally perfect for each other!" When Oliver continued to scowl, Cisco shrugged. "I mean it's not improbable that in another universe they'd..."

Oliver shook his head at Cisco and looked at Felicity Palmer.

"This - is my world." He called out. He pointed to Sara Lance. "She's my friend - they're all my friends. They're the good guys."

She looked like she was mulling it over and then she gave a curt nod and tucked her guns into their holsters.

"Dude! H-how - " Diggle muttered next to him. "How is that not freaking you out?"

Thea just gulped and nodded, vigorously.

"It does." Oliver sighed and mumbled, recalling her killshots. "Every fucking time."

Oliver looked at Laurel. She nodded in understanding and jogged towards the prone form of the other Sara who had miraculously gone silent and fallen limp. Felicity Palmer narrowed her eyes at Laurel but she didn't say anything

Oliver turned to look at his friends and almost laughed out loud at the gobsmacked expression on Diggle's face.

"John!" Her voice drew his attention.

The stony look on her face was gone. It was filled with tenderness and emotion. She looked so much like the Felicity they knew, that for an instant Oliver felt like déjà vu. 

She walked almost as though she were in a trance. Oliver stepped aside as she slowly came forward and caught Diggle's shoulders. She clasped the side of his face with her hand, a like she was seeing him after a very long time. Like she'd missed him.

Diggle kept eyeing her hair with a freaked-out expression. "Hi...er - Felicity?" Diggle said, hesitantly. 

"Are we friends here?" She said, her voice wavering - sounding so much like his girl.

Diggle's eyes focused on her face. He seemed taken aback. "Yes, of- of course." He said, hesitantly.

"Good." She whispered. Wordlessly, showing emotions he'd never seen in her face, she rose on her toes and embraced him.

Diggle hugged her back.

She drew away quickly and stepped towards Thea. 

"Er...hi?" Thea said, shifting uncomfortably.

She cupped Thea's face with a bright smile that took his breath away. She was looking at her with affection. Thea stood still as Felicity pushed Thea's hood back, and lifted her eye mast over her head.

"Hey!" Felicity said, in a voice so gentle, Oliver felt his chest tighten. "Hi!" She said and then pulled his sister into a tight hug.

Oliver remembered what the Thea of her world looked like. Felicity Palmer was seeing a healthy, strong Thea after several years. Even if she wasn't the Thea from his world.

"I...er..." Thea said, awkwardly, holding her arms by her side, looking at him from the side. "Erm...I missed you too?" Thea offered.

A soft snort of laughter sounded from Felicity Palmer as she drew back. There was something like pride written all over her countenance.

"It's so good to see you." She said, and then cupped the back of Thea's head and pulled her forwards, to kiss her forehead.

The action amazed him.

"You're so beautiful." She whispered.

"Erm...I..." Thea said, clearly touched, but still awkward. "Thanks, I think. You too."

Felicity smiled at her fondly and then turned back to look at him. Her smile began to fade, when Sara came by his side. Within seconds the tenderness was gone. The cold, unfeeling expression was back.

"You shot her!" His Sara said curtly to Felicity with an accusing glare as she came towards them. "You shot me."

"Relax." Mrs. Palmer said, emotionlessly pointing to the other Sara "I only tranqued her."

Sara tapped her bo-staff on the ground as a threat. "You're not at all like the Felicity we know." She said.

"So bite me." Felicity Palmer hissed back with a murderous glare that had his Sara stepping back more out of surprise than anything.

"Damn." Diggle and Cisco muttered simultaneously. Oliver nodded.

Mrs. Palmer stepped back, gravitating closer to his side, but still looking over John and Thea, as though they would disappear any second.

  _Not at all like the Felicity they knew._

_Felicity..._

"Felicity." Oliver said, immediately. He turned towards Cisco. "Where is she? Why isn't she in the Lair?"

 _That_ look returned to all their faces.

"I - I don't know how to tell you this man." Diggle said, looking at Laurel, Thea, Sara and Cisco and then back at him.

Oliver's blood ran cold.

"Where's Felicity?" He said, gritting his teeth.

"Oliver...she's gone. She was taken."

Blood rushed into his ears. His heart began to thud furiously.

"What do you mean, Dig?" Oliver said, coming forward and clapping a hand on John's shoulder. The other man flinched, his head dropped.

"John." He said. "Who took her?"

Never was an answer more unexpected.  "You did." Diggle said, glancing at Felicity Palmer and then back at him. "Except - it wasn't you."

 

 

_ Earth X _

_"Get away from me!"_

Thea.

That was Thea's voice.

Felicity sat up with a start. She jerked her head around. She shoved off the blanket covering her and scrambled off the small cot.

"Argh!" She winced as a thousand pin-pricks shot through her face. She wobbled as she stood looking around the dimly lit space.

Where was she? What happened? Felicity held her head and tried to recall - but her mind was blank.

_"You're dead! You're dead! You're not real!"_

Thea.

Felicity rushed to the door and rattled it open. Thea's cries grew louder. Felicity stepped into a corridor. She padded hurriedly on her bare feet towards the sound.

(Something happened to her and Thea. She had to get them out. It sucked, that she didn't have a weapon, but she was Felicity Smoak, she would figure it out.)

Felicity peeked around the corner hoping that no one was torturing Thea, because she wasn't sure she could fight off a bad guy with her heart twisting for Thea at the same time.

_Thea?_

A frail wisp of a girl stood chained to a corner. Her long waist length wavy hair was blonde with multiple streaks of red, purple, blue, yellow and green. Felicity would have otherwise joked that she was looking at a picture of do-it-yourself hair colouring packs gone wrong. She would have...if she hadn't recognized the girl.

It was worse than when Thea'd been skewered by Ra's al-Ghul. It was the most awful thing she'd seen.

_Why was she chained?_

Felicity held her head instantly, as a pounding headache split through. A sudden rush of memories flooded her. She felt her neck - the skin felt sore and bruised.

This Thea's obvious captor just stood at the dining table nearby hunched over something, he seemed completely oblivious to her screaming. But he flinched every time, her voice became shriller - so he couldn't be deaf. or have ear plugs -

\- or have any plausible explanation for how unaffected he was.

_Not her Oliver._

Oliver -three-PhD's-Queen turned towards Thea. Felicity's heart felt a chill when she saw how Thea's screaming turned to sobs and she shrunk away, shaking her head.

She was pleading. "No! No!" Thea was wailing. "Please! No!"

Felicity felt like she was stuck in a slasher-movie. Her feet wouldn't move. She stood dumbstruck as Queen pulled out a syringe-gun, he grabbed Thea's arm with a brutal force and unemotional face and he just stuck the needle into her arm without any of the care or concern she was accustomed to seeing on _that_ particular face. Her heart trembled at the sight of the poor hapless girl sinking to the ground, her arms suspended up by the chains.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Felicity found herself screaming

He looked at her with irritation. Something she hadn't seen on his face.

"I asked you a question." Felicity shrieked.

"She was getting really loud." Queen said, shrugging.

"That's your sister!" She hissed.

" _Half_ \- " He bit out. "Sister. She's not even legitimate."

Her just turned around and went back to hunching over whatever he was doing on the table.

Felicity felt her blood boil. She looked around furiously and spotted a baseball bat lying next to the corner. She fetched it, tested it's weight and held it exactly as Diggle taught her to hold it whenever she had to hit someone.

She marched over to him, ready to beat the crap out of him, even if it was the last thing she'd do, because _that's_ how mad she was.

"Before you strike." He said, stopping her. "You better hear me out first."

"What could you possibly have to say to me?" She spat, gripping the bat tightly, watching him turn around. "That could make any of this make sense?"

"A lot." He said, calmly. "But it starts with her." He pointed to Thea's limp form.

He steps away from the table and Felicity sees a pouch rolled out containing vials and syinges in the holder-pockets.

"What did you do?" Felicity growled, adjusting the bat into one hand and going to Thea. She set the bat down and tried to cradle her.

She looked so... _sickly pale_...with the blonde hair and sallow skin.

"I broke her." He said, sounding bitter. "I broke the only woman who loved me as I was. And I was too big a fool to realize it."

"Damn straight." She muttered, looking down at Thea with pity.

"Not her." He said. Felicity looked up at him. When he looked into her eyes, she was taken aback to see what she did.

"Not Thea." He echoes.

It's like a dam shattered somewhere and a whole myriad of emotions was a flooding through, all trapped in his blue eyes. For once he reminded her of the Oliver she knew. 

"You..." He said, with a trembling voice. "I mean...I mean... _Felicity_ , my wife."

Felicity just watched him silently. He shook his head and turned to the syringes. She could swear she heard a sob.

"And now," He said, his voice hardening. "I'm going to fix it. And you're going to help me, Miss Smoak."

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry it's been a year since I've updated. Real Life suddenly upped and bit me in the rear and it's been tough for me.  
> I'm very disappointed with how S4 has ended up and what s5 will potentially be. So i'm putting alll fics on hold till s5 is done.  
> I love Oliver and Felicity and I love the nuances of their relationship. I feel the show has lost that flavor.  
> I feel terrible about disappointing you guys, but I'm not giving up, it's just tough to stick to the characterizations because now I'm blocked.


End file.
